Читать книгу The Master of the Ceremonies - George Manville Fenn - Страница 13

There was a flush on Claire Denville’s cheek as she turned restlessly upon her pillow. Her dreams were of pain and trouble, and from time to time a sigh escaped her lips.

The rushlight which burned in a socket set in the middle of a tin cup of water, surrounded by a japanned cylinder full of holes, sent curious shadows and feeble rays about the plainly furnished room, giving everything a weird and ghostly look as the thin rush candle burned slowly down.

All at once she started up, listened, and remained there, hardly breathing. Then, as if not satisfied, she rose, hurriedly dressed herself, and, lighting a candle, went down to Lady Teigne’s room.

The position had been unsought, but had been forced upon her by the exacting old woman, and by degrees Claire had found herself personal attendant, and liable to be called up at any moment during one of the many little attacks that the great sapper and miner made upon the weak fortress, tottering to its fall.

Was it fancy, or had she heard Lady Teigne call?

It seemed to Claire, as she descended, that she had been lying in an oppressive dream, listening to call after call, but unable to move and master the unseen force that held her down.

She paused as she reached the landing, with the drawing-room door on her right, Lady Teigne’s bedroom before her, and, down a short passage on her left, her father’s room. Isaac slept in his pantry, by the empty plate-chest and the wineless cellar. Morton’s room was next her own, on the upper floor, and the maids slept at the back.

The only sound to be heard was the faint wash of the waves as they curled over upon the shingle where the tide was going out.

“It must have been fancy,” said Claire, after listening intently; and she stood there with the light throwing up the eager look upon her face, with her lips half parted, and a tremulous motion about her well-cut nostrils as her bosom rose and fell.

Then, drawing a breath full of relief, she turned to go, the horror that had assailed her dying off; for ever since Lady Teigne had been beneath their roof, Claire had been haunted by the idea that some night she would be called up at a time when the visit her ladyship insisted in every act was so far off had been paid.

Feeling for the moment, then, satisfied that she had been deceived, Claire ascended three or four stairs, her sweet face growing composed, and the soft, rather saddened smile that generally sat upon her lips gradually returning, when, as if moved by a fresh impulse, she descended again, listened, and then softly turned the handle of the door, and entered.

She did not close the door behind her, only letting it swing to, and then, raising the candle above her head, glanced round.

There was nothing to take her attention.

The curtain of the bed was drawn along by the head, and in an untidy way, leaving the end of the bolster exposed. But that only indicated that the fidgety, querulous old woman had fancied she could feel a draught from the folding-doors that led into the drawing-room, and she had often drawn them like that before.

“She is fast asleep,” thought Claire.

The girl was right; Lady Teigne was fast asleep.

“If I let the light fall upon her face it will wake her,” she said to herself.

But it was an error; the light Claire Denville carried was too dim for that. Still she hesitated to approach the bedside, knowing that unless she took her opiate medicine Lady Teigne’s night’s rest was of a kind that rendered her peevish and irritable the whole of the next day, and as full of whims as some fretful child.

She seemed to be sleeping so peacefully that Claire once more glanced round the room prior to returning to bed.

The folding-doors were closed so that there could be no draught. The glass of lemonade was on the little table on the other side of the bed, on which ticked the little old carriage-clock, for Lady Teigne was always anxious about the lapse of time. The jewel-casket was on the—

No: the jewel-casket was not on the dressing-table, and with a spasm of dread shooting through her, Claire Denville stepped quietly to the bedside, drew back the curtain, holding the candle above her head, let fall the curtain and staggered back with her eyes staring with horror, her lips apart, and her breath held for a few moments, but to come again with a hoarse sob.

She did not shriek aloud; she did not faint. She stood there with her face thrust forward, her right arm crooked and extended as if in the act of drawing back the curtain, and her left hand still holding the candlestick above her head—stiffened as it were by horror into the position, and gazing still toward the bed.

That hoarse sob, that harsh expiration of the breath seemed to give her back her power of movement, and, turning swiftly, she ran from the room and down the short passage to rap quickly at her father’s door.

“Papa! Papa!” she cried, in a hoarse whisper, trembling now in every limb, and gazing with horror-stricken face over her shoulder, as if she felt that she was being pursued.

Almost directly she heard a faint clattering sound of a glass rattling on the top of the water-bottle as someone crossed the room, the night-bolt was raised, the door opened, and the Master of the Ceremonies stood there, tall and thin, with his white hands tightly holding his long dressing-gown across his chest.

His face was ghastly as he gazed at Claire. There was a thick dew over his forehead, so dense that it glistened in the light of the candle, and made his grey hair cling to his white temples.

He had evidently not been undressed, for his stiff white cravat was still about his neck, and the silken strings of his pantaloons were still tied at the ankles. Moreover, the large signet-ring that had grown too large for his thin finger had not been taken off. It was as if he had hastily thrown off his coat, and put on his dressing-gown; but, though the night was warm, he was shivering, his lower lip trembling, and he had hard work to keep his teeth from chattering together like the glass upon the carafe.

“Father,” cried Claire, catching him by the breast, “then you have heard something?”

“Heard—heard something?” he stammered; and then, seeming to make an effort to recover his sang froid, “heard something? Yes—you—startled me.”

“But—but—oh, papa! It is too horrible!”

She staggered, and had to hold by him to save herself from falling. But recovering somewhat, she held him by one hand, then thrust herself away, looking the trembling man wildly in the face.

“Did you not hear—that cry?”

“No,” he said hastily, “no. What is the matter?”

“Lady Teigne! Quick! Oh, father, it cannot be true!”

“Lady—Lady Teigne?” he stammered, “is—is she—is she ill?”

“She is dead—she is dead!” wailed Claire.

“No, no! No, no! Impossible!” cried the old man, who was shivering visibly.

“It is true,” said Claire. “No, no, it cannot be. I must be wrong. Quick! It may be some terrible fit!”

She clung to his hand, and tried to hurry him out of the room, but he drew back.

“No,” he stammered, “not yet. Your—your news—agitated me, Claire. Does—wait a minute—does anyone—in the—in the house know?”

“No, dear. I thought I heard a cry, and I came down, and she—”

“A fit,” he said hastily, as he took the glass from the top of the water-bottle, filled it, gulped the water down, and set bottle and glass back in their places. “A fit—yes—a fit.”

“Come with me, father, quick!” cried Claire.

“Yes. Yes, I’ll go with you—directly,” he said, fumbling for his handkerchief in the tail of the coat thrown over the chair, finding his snuff-box, and taking a great pinch.

“Come, pray come!” she cried again, as she gazed at him in a bewildered way, his trembling becoming contagious, and her lips quivering with a new dread greater than the horror at the end of the passage.

“Yes—yes,” he faltered—“I’ll come. So alarming to be woke up—like this—in the middle of the night. Shall I—shall I ring, Claire? Or will you call the maids?”

“Come with me first,” cried Claire. “It may not be too late.”

“Yes,” he cried, “it is—it is too late.”

“Father!”

“You—you said she was dead,” he cried hastily. “Yes—yes—let us go. Perhaps only a fit. Come.”

He seemed to be now as eager to go as he had been to keep back, and, holding his child’s hand tightly, he hurried with her to Lady Teigne’s apartment, where he paused on the mat to draw a long, catching breath.

The next moment the door had swung to behind them, and father and daughter stood gazing one at the other.

“Don’t, don’t,” he cried, in a low, angry voice, as he turned from her. “Don’t look at me like that, Claire. What—what do you want me to do?”

Claire turned her eyes from him to gaze straight before her in a curiously dazed manner; and then, without a word, she crossed to the bedside and drew back the curtain, fixing her father with her eyes once more.

“Look!” she said, in a harsh whisper; “quick! See whether we are in time.”

The old man uttered a curious supplicating cry, as if in remonstrance against the command that forced him to act, and, as if in his sleep, and with his eyes fixed upon those of his child, he walked up close to the bed, bent over it a moment, and then with a shudder he snatched the curtain from Claire’s hand, and thrust it down.

“Dead!” he said, with a gasp. “Dead!”

There was an awful silence in the room for a few moments, during which the ticking of the little clock on the table beyond the bed sounded painfully loud, and the beat of the waves amid the shingle rose into a loud roar.

“Father, she has been—”

“Hush!” he half shrieked, “don’t say so. Oh, my child, my child!”

Claire trembled, and it was as though a mutual attraction drew them to gaze fixedly the one at the other, in spite of every effort to tear their eyes away.

At last, with a wrench, the old man turned his head aside, and Claire uttered a low moan as she glanced from him to the bed and then back towards the window.

“Ah!” she cried, starting forward, and, bending down beside the dressing-table, she picked up the casket that was lying half hidden by drapery upon the floor.

But the jewel-casket was quite empty, and she set it down upon the table. It had been wrenched open with a chisel or knife-blade, and the loops of the lock had been torn out.

“Shall we—a doctor—the constables?” he stammered.

“I—I do not know,” said Claire hoarsely, acting like one in a dream; and she staggered forward, kicking against something that had fallen near the casket.

She involuntarily stooped to pick it up, but it had been jerked by her foot nearer to her father, who bent down with the quickness of a boy and snatched it up, hiding it hastily beneath his dressing-gown, but not so quickly that Claire could not see that it was a great clasp-knife.

“What is that?” she cried sharply.

“Nothing—nothing,” he said.

They stood gazing at each other for a few moments, and then the old man uttered a hoarse gasp.

“Did—did you see what I picked up?” he whispered; and he caught her arm with his trembling hand.

“Yes; it was a knife.”

“No,” he cried wildly. “No; you saw nothing. You did not see me pick up that knife.”

“I did, father,” said Claire, shrinking from him with an invincible repugnance.

“You did not,” he whispered. “You dare not say you did, when I say be silent.”

“Oh, father! father!” she cried with a burst of agony.

“It means life or death,” he whispered, grasping her arm so tightly that his fingers seemed to be turned to iron. “Come,” he cried with more energy, “hold the light.”

He crossed the room and opened the folding-doors, going straight into the drawing-room, when the roar of the surf upon the shore grew louder, and as Claire involuntarily followed, she listened in a heavy-dazed way as her father pointed out that a chair had been overturned, and that the window was open and one of the flower-pots in the balcony upset.

“The jasmine is torn away from the post and balustrade,” he said huskily; “someone must have climbed up there.”

Claire did not speak, but listened to him as he grew more animated now, and talked quickly.

“Let us call up Isaac and Morton,” he said. “We must have help. The doctor should be fetched, and—and a constable.”

Claire gazed at him wildly.

“Did—did you hear anything?” he said hurriedly, as he closed the folding-doors.

“I was asleep,” said Claire, starting and shuddering as she heard his words. “I thought I heard a cry.”

“Yes, a cry,” he said; “I thought I heard a cry and I dressed quickly and was going to see, when—when you came to me. Recollect that you will be called up to speak, my child—an inquest—that is all you know. You went in and found Lady Teigne dead, and you came and summoned me. That is all you know.”

She did not answer, and he once more gripped her fiercely by the wrist.

“Do you hear me?” he cried. “I say that is all you know.”

She looked at him again without answering, and he left her to go and summon Morton and the footman.

Claire stood in the drawing-room, still holding the candlestick in her hand, with the stiffening form of the solitary old woman, whose flame of life had been flickering so weakly in its worldly old socket that the momentary touch of the extinguisher had been sufficient to put it out, lying just beyond those doors; on the other hand the roar of the falling tide faintly heard now through the closed window. She heard her father knocking at the door of her brother’s room. Then she heard the stairs creak as he descended to call up the footman from the pantry below; and as she listened everything seemed strange and unreal, and she could not believe that a horror had fallen upon them that should make a hideous gulf between her and her father for ever, blast her young life so that she would never dare again to give her innocent love to the man by whom she knew she was idolised, and make her whole future a terror—a terror lest that which she felt she knew must be discovered, if she, weak woman that she was, ever inadvertently spoke what was life and light to her—the truth.

“My God! What shall I do?”

It was a wild passionate cry for help where she felt that help could only be, and then, with her brain swimming, and a horrible dread upon her, she was about to open her lips and denounce her own father—the man who gave her life—as a murderer and robber of the dead. She turned to the door as it opened, and, deadly pale, but calm and firm now, Stuart Denville, Master of the Ceremonies at Saltinville, entered the room.

He uttered a low cry, and started forward to save her, but he was too late. Claire had fallen heavily upon her face, her hands outstretched, and the china candlestick she still held was shattered to fragments upon the floor.

At that moment, as if in mockery, a sweet, low chord of music rose from without, below the window, and floating away on the soft night air, the old man felt the sweet melody thrill his very nerves as he sank upon his knees beside his child.