Читать книгу The Mysteries of Heron Dyke (Vol. 1-3) - T. W. Speight - Страница 9

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"You must go round to the side-door if you have any business here," cried a shrill, angry, quavering voice, in answer to the loud knocking of a stranger at the main entrance of Heron Dyke.

Edward Conroy--for he it was--could not at first make out where the voice came from, but when he stepped from under the portico and glanced upward, he saw a withered face protruded from one of the upper windows, and a skinny hand and arm pointing in the direction of a door which he now noticed for the first time in a corner of the right wing. For the first time, too, he saw that the grim old door at which he had been knocking looked as if it had not been opened for years, and that the knocker itself was rusty from disuse. Even the steps that led up to the portico were falling into disrepair, and through the cracks and crevices tiny tufts of grass and patches of velvety moss showed themselves here and there.

Conroy descended the steps slowly, and then turned to take another look at the grey old house, which he had never seen before to-day. The first view of it, as he crossed the bridge over the moat, had not impressed him favourably. But now that he looked at it again, the quaint formality of its lines seemed to please him better. It might have few pretensions to architectural dignity; but, with the passage of years, there had come to it a certain harmoniousness such as it had never possessed when it was new. Summer sun and winter rain had not been without their effect upon it. They had toned down the hardness of its original outlines: its coldness seemed less cold, its formality not so formal, as they must once have seemed. It was slowly mellowing in the soft, sweet air of antiquity.

He noticed, as he walked along the front of the house from the main entrance to the side-door, that the entire range of windows on the ground floor had their shutters fastened, and those of the upper floor their blinds drawn down. His heart chilled for a moment as the thought struck him that some one might perhaps be lying dead inside the house. But then he reflected that he should surely have heard such a thing spoken of at the village inn, where he had slept last night. Was it not, rather, that the house had always the same shut-up look that it wore to-day?

Conroy knocked at the side-door, a heavy door also, and was answered by the loud barking of a dog. After waiting for what seemed an intolerable time, he heard footsteps in the distance, which slowly drew nearer. The door was unbolted, and opened as far as the chain inside would permit. Through this opening peered forth the crabbed, wizened face of an old man--of a man with a pointed chin, and a long nose, and eyes that were full of suspicion and ill-humour.

"And what may be your business at Heron Dyke?" he demanded, in a harsh, querulous voice, after a look that took in the stranger from head to foot.

"Be good enough to give this card to Mr. Denison, and if he can spare two minutes----"

"He won't see any strangers without he knows their business first," interrupted the old man brusquely, as he turned the card to the light that was streaming through the open doorway into the dim corridor in which he stood, and read the name printed on it. "Never heard of you before," he added. "Maybe you are a spy--a mean, dastardly spy," he continued, after a pause, still eyeing the young man suspiciously from under his thick white eyebrows.

"A spy! No, I am not a spy. Have you any spies in these parts?"

"Lots of them."

"And what do they come to spy out?"

"That's none of your business, sir, so long as you're not one--though that has to be proved," answered the crusty old man, as he went away with the card, leaving Conroy outside.

He turned, and began to pace the gravelled pathway in front of the door.

"Is my sweet princess here, I wonder, and shall I succeed in seeing her?" he said to himself. "Very like a wild-goose chase, this errand of mine. To see her once in London for a couple of hours--to fall in love with her then and there--to come racing down to this out-of-the-world spot, weeks afterwards, on the bare possibility of seeing her again--when she probably remembers no more of me than she does of any other indifferent stranger--what can that be but the act of a----"

Light footsteps were coming swiftly down the stone corridor. Conroy's face flushed, and a strange eager light leapt into his eyes. There was a rustle of garments, then the heavy chain dropped, the door swung wide on its hinges, and Ella Winter stood revealed to Conroy's happy gaze.

His card was in her hand. She glanced from it to his face, and, a momentary blush mounting to her cheek, she advanced a step or two, and held out her hand.

"Mr. Conroy," she said, "I have not forgotten your sketches. Or you either," she added, as if by an after-thought, a smile playing round her lips by this time, coming and going like spring sunshine.

She led the way in, and he followed. The long, flagged corridor, with its dim light, struck him with a chill, after coming out of the bright air. Ella entered a small, oak-panelled room, plainly and heavily furnished, and invited Mr. Conroy to sit down.

"We live mostly at the back of the house," she observed. "My uncle prefers the rooms to those in front."

"It is a grand old house," answered Conroy. "And what might it not be made!" he added to himself.

"You received your portfolio of sketches back safely, Mr. Conroy, I hope. My aunt left them at your address that day when we went out for our drive."

"Did you indeed leave them? Were you so good?"

"Sketches such as those are too valuable to be trusted to the chance of loss," said Ella.

"I was so very sorry not to call again on Mrs. Carlyon, as I had promised," he continued, "but the next day but one I had to leave town. I wonder what she thought of me?"

"I don't think she thought at all," replied Ella, ingenuously--"though she would, I am sure, have been glad to see you. Aunt Gertrude was too full of her loss in those days to notice who visited her. On the evening of the party she lost her jewels."

"Lost her jewels!" exclaimed Conroy. "Do you mean those she wore?"

"No, no. Her casket of jewels was stolen from her dressing-room. Some of them were very valuable. The case was left on her dressing-table, and it disappeared during the evening."

"Was the case itself stolen?"

"We thought so that night, but the next morning, when the housemaids were sweeping her boudoir--the room in which we looked at your sketches, if you remember--they found the case on the floor, ingeniously hidden behind the window-curtain."

"Empty?"

"Oh, of course. The thief had taken the contents and left the case. Aunt Gertrude can hear nothing of them."

"I hope and trust she will find them," was Mr. Conroy's warm answer. And then he went on, after a perceptible pause: "I think you know already, Miss Winter, that I am connected with the Press. The world being quiet just now, my employers, having nothing better for me to do, have found a very peaceful mission for me for the time being. They have sent me into this part of the country to take sketches of different old mansions and family seats, and I am here to-day to seek Mr. Denison's permission to make a couple of drawings of Heron Dyke."

Ella hesitated for a moment or two, toying nervously with Conroy's card, which she still held. Then she spoke:

"My uncle is a confirmed invalid, Mr. Conroy, and very much of a recluse. Strangers, or indeed acquaintances whom he has not met for a long time, are unwelcome to him, even when there is no need for him to see them personally. Whether he will see you, or grant you the permission you ask for, without seeing you, is more than I can tell. I will, however, try my best to induce him to do so."

"Thank you very much," said Conroy. "I certainly should like to take some sketches of this old house: but, rather than put Mr. Denison out of the way, or cause the slightest annoyance in the matter, I will forego----"

"Certainly not," Ella hastily interrupted: "at least, until I have spoken to my uncle. If he would but see you it might rouse him from the lethargy that seems to be gradually creeping over him, and would do him good. To receive more visitors would be so much better for him! You will excuse me for a few minutes, will you not?"

"What a life for this fair young creature to lead!" Conroy said to himself as soon as she was gone. "To be shut up in this gloomy old house with a querulous hypochondriac who suspects an enemy in every stranger and dreads he knows not what; but it seems to me that women can endure things that would drive a man crazy. Would that I were the knight to rescue her from this wizard's grasp, and take her out into the sweet sunlight!"

He stood gazing out of the window, tapping the panes lightly with his fingers and smiling to himself, lost in dreams.

"My uncle will see you," said Ella, as she re-entered the room.

"Thank you for your kind intervention."

"He is in one of his more gracious moods to-day; but you must be careful not to contradict him if you wish to obtain his sanction to what you require. And now I will show you to his room."

After traversing two or three flagged passages, Conroy was ushered into a room which might have been an enlarged copy of the one he had just left. It was the same room in which Captain Lennox's interview took place on the night of his return from London. Aaron Stone was coming out as Conroy went in. The old man greeted him with a queer, sour look, and some uncomplimentary remark, muttered to himself. Then he went out, and banged the heavy door noisily behind him.

"S--s--s--s! That confounded door again!" exclaimed a rasping, high-pitched voice from behind the screen at the farther end of the room. "Will that old rapscallion never remember that I have nerves? Ah--ha! if I could but cuff him as I used to do!" added the Squire, breaking off with a fit of coughing.

Ella held up a warning finger, and waited without moving till all was quiet again. She then glided across the polished, uncarpeted floor, and passed in front of the screen. Conroy waited in the background.

"I have brought Mr. Conroy to see you, Uncle Gilbert--the gentleman who wants to take some sketches of the Hall," said Ella, in tones a little louder than ordinary.

"And who gave you leave, young lady, to introduce any strangers here? You know--"

"You yourself gave me leave, uncle, not many minutes ago," she quietly interposed. "You said that you would see Mr. Conroy."

"Did I, child?"

"Certainly you did."

"Then my memory must be failing me faster than I thought it was." Here came a deep sigh, followed by a moment or two of silence. "You are right, Ella. I remember it now. Let us see what this bold intruder is like."

Conroy stepped forward in front of the screen, and saw before him the Master of Heron Dyke. He looked to-day precisely as he had looked that evening, now several weeks ago, when Captain Lennox called at the Hall. It might be that his face was a little thinner and more worn, but that was the only difference.

"So! You are the young jackanapes who wants to sketch my house--eh?" said Mr. Denison, as he peered into Conroy's face with eager, suspicious eyes. "How do I know that you are not a spy--a vile spy?" He ground out the last word from beneath his teeth, and craned his long neck forward so as to bring it closer to Conroy's face.

"Do I look like a spy, sir?" asked Conroy calmly, as he went a pace nearer to the old man's chair.

"What have looks to do with it? There's many a false heart beneath a fair-seeming face. Aye, many--many." He spoke the last words as if to himself, and when he had ended he sat staring out of the window like one who had become suddenly oblivious of everything around him. His lips moved, but no sound came from them.

Mr. Denison's reverie was broken by the entrance of Aaron with letters and newspapers. Then the Squire turned to Conroy. "So you're not a spy, eh? Well, I don't know that you look like one. But pray what can there be about a musty tumble-down old house, like this, that you should want to make a sketch of it?"

"The Denisons are one of the oldest families in Norfolk. Surely, sir, some account of the home of such a family would interest many people."

"And how come you to know so much about the Denisons?" shrewdly asked the Squire. "But sit down. It worries me to see people standing at my elbow."

"Such knowledge is a part of my stock-in-trade," said Conroy, as he took a chair. "I have not only to make the sketches, but to tell the public all about them. Both in Burke and the 'County History' I have found many interesting particulars of the old family whose home is at Heron Dyke."

"So--so! And pray, young sir, what other houses in the county have you sketched before you found your way here?"

"None; I have come to you, sir, before going anywhere else."

"Well said, young man. The county can boast of finer houses by the score, but what are the families who live in them? Mushrooms--mere mushrooms in comparison with the Denisons. We might have been ennobled centuries ago had we chosen to accept a title. But the Denisons always thought themselves above such gewgaws."

"Was it not to the same purport, sir, that Colonel Denison answered James the Second when his Majesty offered him a patent of nobility on the eve of the Battle of the Boyne?"

"Ah--ha! your reading has been to some purpose," said the old man, with a dry chuckle. "That's the colonel's portrait over there in the left-hand corner. They used to tell me that I was something like him when I was a young spark."

Evidently he was pleased. He rubbed his lean, chilly fingers together, and fell into another reverie. Conroy glanced round. Ella was sitting at her little work-table busy with her crewels. What a sweet picture she made in the young man's eyes as she sat there in her grey dress, with the rich coils of her chestnut hair bound closely round her head, and an agate locket set in gold suspended from her neck by a ribbon, in which was a portrait of her dead mother. Not knowing that Conroy was gazing at her, her eyes glanced up from her work and encountered his. Next moment the long lashes hid them again, but the sweet carnation in her cheeks betrayed that she had been taken unawares.

Then Gilbert Denison spoke again. "There's something about you, young man," he said, "that seems to wake in my mind an echo of certain old memories which I thought were dead and buried for ever. Whether it's in your voice, or your eyes, or in the way you carry your head, or in all of them together, I don't know. Very likely what I mean exists only in my own imagination: I sometimes think I'm getting into my dotage. What do you say your name is?" he asked abruptly.

"Conroy, sir. Edward Conroy."

Mr. Denison shook his head. "I never knew any family of that name."

"The Conroys have been settled in North Devon for the last three hundred years."

"Never heard of 'em. But that's no matter. As I said before, there's something about you that comes home to me and that I like, though I'll be hanged if I know what it is, and I've no doubt I'm an old simpleton for telling you as much. Anyhow, you may take what sketches of the place you like. You have my free permission for that. And if you're not above dining off boiled mutton--we are plain folk here now--you may find your way back to this room at five sharp, and there will be a knife and fork ready for you. Why not?"

The interview was over. Ella conducted Conroy into another room, and then rang the bell. "There must be some magic about you," she said, with a smile, "to have charmed my uncle as you have. You don't know what a rarity it is for him to see a fresh face at Heron Dyke."

Aaron Stone answered the bell, Ella gave Conroy into his charge, with instructions to show him all that there was to be seen, and to allow him to sketch whatever he might choose. The old man received this with a bad grace. He had become so thoroughly imbued with the fear of spies and what they might do, that no courtesy was left in him. Growling something under his breath about strangers on a Friday always bringing ill-luck, he limped away to fetch his bunch of keys.

"What a capital subject for an etching," thought Conroy, as he looked after the old man.

When five o'clock struck, Conroy shut up his sketch-book and retraced his way to Mr. Denison's room. The dinner was almost as homely as the host had divined that it would be. But if the viands were plain, the wine was super-excellent, and as Conroy could see that he was expected to praise it, he did not fail to do so. A basin of soup, followed by a little jelly and a glass of Madeira, formed Mr. Denison's dinner. His bodily weakness was evidently very great. It seemed to Conroy that the man was upheld and sustained more by his indomitable energy of will than by any physical strength he might be possessed of. "Heron Dyke will want a new master before long," was Conroy's unspoken thought, as he looked at the long-drawn, cadaverous face before him.

Ella would have left the room when the cloth was drawn, but her uncle bade her stay; for which Conroy thanked him inwardly. The young artist quickly found that if the evening were not to languish, perhaps end in failure, he must do the brunt of the talking himself. Mr. Denison was no great talker at the best of times, and Ella, from some cause or another, was more reserved than usual; so Conroy plunged off at a tangent, and did his best to interest his hearers with an account of his experiences in Paris during the disastrous days of the Commune. As Desdemona of old was thrilled by the story of Othello's adventures, so was Ella thrilled this evening. Even Mr. Denison grew interested, and for once let his mind wander for a little while from his own interests and his own concerns.

As they sat thus, the September evening slowly darkened. The candles were never lighted till the last moment. Conroy sat facing the windows which opened into the private garden at the back of the Hall. The boundary of this garden was an ivy-covered wall about six feet high. A low-browed door in one corner gave access to the kitchen-garden, beyond which was the orchard, and last of all a wide stretch of park. There were flowers in the borders round the garden wall, but opposite the windows grew two large yews, whose sombre foliage clouded much of the light that would otherwise have crept in through the diamond-paned windows, and made more gloomy still an apartment which, even on the brightest of summer days, never looked anything but cheerless and cold. On this overcast September eve the yew-trees outside blackened slowly, and seemed to draw the darkness down from the sky. Aaron came in at last with candles, and while he was disposing them Conroy rose, crossed to one of the windows, and stood looking out into the garden. It was almost dark by this time. While looking thus, he suddenly saw the figure of a man emerge from behind one of the yews, stare intently into the room for a moment, and then vanish behind the other yew. Conroy was startled. Was there, then, really truth in the Squire's assertion that spies were continually hovering round the Hall? Somehow he had deemed it nothing more than the hallucination of a sick man's fancy.

With what object could spies come to Heron Dyke? It was a mystery that puzzled Conroy. He crossed over to Ella and told her in a low voice what he had seen. She looked up with a startled expression in her eyes.

"Don't say a word about it to my uncle," she whispered. "It would only worry him, and could do no good. Both he and Aaron often assert that they see strange people lurking about the house; but I myself have never seen anyone."

The Squire began to talk again, and nothing more passed. When Conroy rose to take his leave, his host held his hand and spoke to him cordially.

"You will be in the neighbourhood for some days, you tell us, Mr. Conroy. If you have nothing better to do on Tuesday than spend a few hours with a half-doited old man and a country lassie, try and find your way here again. Eh, now?"

This, nothing loth, Conroy promised to do; the more so as Ella's needle was suspended in mid-air for a moment while she waited to hear his answer. Conroy's eyes met hers for an instant as she gave him her hand at parting, but she was on her guard this time, and nothing was to be read there.

He had not gone many steps from the house when there was a rustle amidst the trees he was passing; and a young and well-dressed man, so far as Mr. Conroy could see, who had been apparently peering through an opening in the trees, walked quickly away.

"He was watching the house," said Mr. Conroy to himself. "One of the spies, I suppose. What on earth is it that they want to find out?"

Dull enough felt Ella after Conroy's departure.

"I'll get a book," she said, shaking off her thoughts, which had turned on the man Conroy had seen behind the yew-tree: and she went to a distant room in search of one. Coming back with it, she saw the two housemaids, Martha and Ann, standing at the foot of the stairs which led up to the north wing. One of them held a candle, the other clung to her arm; both their faces were wearing an unmistakable look of terror.

"What is the matter?" she asked, going towards them.

"We've just heard something, Miss Ella," whispered Ann. "One of the bedroom-doors up there has just shut with a loud bang."

"And it sounded like the door of her room," spoke the other from her pale and frightened lips. "Miss Ella, I am sure it was."

"The door of whose room?" asked Miss Winter sharply, her own heart beating fast.

"Of Katherine's," answered both the maids together.

For a moment Ella could not command herself.

"What business had you in this part of the house at all?" she questioned, after a pause.

"Mrs. Stone sent us after her spectacles," explained Ann. "She left them in your sitting-room, ma'am, when she was up there seeing to the curtains this afternoon. She sent us, Miss Ella; she'd not go up herself at dark for the world."

"Did she send both of you?" was the almost sarcastic question.

"Ma'am, she knows neither one of us would dare to go alone."

"You are a pair of silly, superstitious girls," rebuked Miss Winter. "What is there in the north wing to frighten you, more than in any other part of the house? I am surprised at you; at you, Ann, especially, knowing as I do how sensibly your mother brought you up."

"I can't help the feeling, miss, though I do strive against it," said Ann, with a half sob. "I know it's wrong, but I can't help myself turning cold when I have to come into this part of the house after dark."

"We hear noises in the north wing as we don't hear elsewhere," said Martha, shivering. "Miss Ella, it is true--if anything ever was true in this world. It was the door of her room we heard just now--loud enough too. Just as if the wind had blown it to, or as if somebody had shut it in a temper."

"There is hardly enough wind this evening to stir a leaf," reproved their young mistress. "And you know that every door in the north wing is locked outside, except that of my sitting-room."

"No, Miss Ella, there's not enough wind, and the doors is locked, as you say; but we heard one of 'em bang, for all that, and it sounded like her door," answered Martha, with respectful persistency.

Ella looked at the young women. Could she cure them of this foolish fear, she asked herself--or, at least, soften it?

"Come with me, both of you," she said, taking the candle into her hand, and leading the way up the great oaken staircase.

Clinging to each other, the servants followed. This, the north wing, was the oldest part of the house. Here and there a stair creaked beneath their footsteps; at every corner there were fantastic shadows, that seemed to lie in wait and then spring suddenly out. The squeaking of a mouse and the pattering of light feet behind the wainscot made the girls start and tremble; but Ella held lightly on her way till the corridor that ran along the whole length of the upper floor of the wing was reached. Into this corridor some dozen rooms opened. Here Ella halted for a moment, and held the candle aloft.

"You shall see for yourselves that it could not be any of these doors you heard. We will examine them one by one."

One after another, the doors were tried by Miss Winter. Each door was found to be locked, its key on the outside. When she reached Number Nine, she drew in her breath, and paused for a moment before turning the handle: perhaps she did not like that room more than the girls did. It was the room they had called "her room." But Number Nine was locked as the others were locked, and Ella passed on.

When all the doors had been tried, Ella turned to the servants.

"You see now that you must have been mistaken," she said, speaking very gravely; but in their own minds neither Martha nor Ann would have admitted anything of the kind.

Ella saw that they were not satisfied. Leading the way back to Number Nine, she turned the key, opened the door, and went in. The two girls ventured no farther than the threshold. The room contained the ordinary adjuncts of a bed-chamber, and of one apparently in use. Across a chair hung a servant's muslin apron, on the chest of drawers lay a servant's cap, a linen collar, and a lavender neck-ribbon. Simple articles all, yet the two housemaids shuddered when their eyes fell on them. In a little vase on the chimney-piece were a few withered flowers--violets and snowdrops. The oval looking-glass on the dressing-table was festooned with muslin, tied with bows of pink ribbon. But Ella, as she held the candle aloft and gazed round the room, saw something to-night that she had never noticed before. The bows of ribbon had been untied, and the muslin drawn across the face of the glass so as completely to cover it.

Ella had been in the room some weeks ago, and she felt sure that the looking-glass was not covered then, It must have been done since; but by whom, and why? That none of the servants would enter the room of their own accord she knew quite well: yet whose fingers, save those of a servant, could have done it? Despite her resolution to be calm, her heart chilled as she asked herself these questions, and her eyes wandered involuntarily to the bed, as though half expecting to see there the dread outlines of a form that was still for ever. The same idea struck the two girls.

"Look at that glass!" cried the one to the other, in a half-whisper. "It is covered up as if there had been a death in the room."

Ella could bear no more. Motioning the servants from the room, she passed out herself and relocked the door. But this time she took the key with her instead of leaving it in the lock.

"You see there is nothing to be afraid of," she said to the girls, as she gave them back the candle at the foot of the stairs. "Do not be so foolish again."

But Ella Winter was herself more perplexed and shaken than she allowed to appear, or would have cared to admit.