The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин
in a way to win my own approval at least. The dupe of William and his sisters, I would not be the dupe of my own fears or even of my own regrets.
The consequence was a renewed equanimity and a gentle brooding over the one event of the day which brought no regret in its train. The ride with Mr. Trohm, and the acquaintanceship to which it had led, were topics upon which I could rest with great soothing effect through the weary hours stretching between me and daylight. Consequently of Mr. Trohm I thought.
Whether the almost deathly quiet into which the house had now fallen, or the comforting nature of my meditations held inexorably to the topic I had chosen, acted as a soporific upon me I cannot tell, but greatly as I dislike to admit it, feeling sure that you will expect to hear I kept myself awake all that night, I insensibly sank from great alertness to an easy indifference to my surroundings, and from that to vague dreams in which beds of lilies and trellises covered with roses mingled strangely with narrow, winding staircases whose tops ended in the swaying branches of great trees; and so, into quiet and a nothingness that were only broken into by a rap at my door and a cheerful:
“Eight o’clock, ma’am. The young ladies are waiting.”
I bounded, literally bounded from my chair. Such a summons, after such a night! What did it mean? I was sitting half dressed in my chair before my door in a straightened and uncomfortable attitude, and therefore had not dreamed that I had been upon the watch all night, yet the sunshine in the room, the cheery tones such as I had not heard even from this woman before, seemed to argue that my imagination had played me false and that no horrors had come to disturb my rest or render my waking distressing.
Stretching out my hand toward the door, I was about to open it, when I bethought me.
“Turn the key in the lock,” said I. “Somebody was careful enough of my safety to fasten me in last night.”
An exclamation of astonishment came from outside the door.
“There is no key here, ma’am. The door is not locked. Shall I open it and come in?”
I was about to say yes in my anxiety to talk to the woman, but remembering that nothing was to be gained by letting it be seen to what an extent I had carried my suspicions, I hastily disrobed and crept into bed. Pulling the coverings about me, I assumed a comfortable attitude and then cried:
“Come in.”
The door immediately opened.
“There, ma’am! What did I tell you? Locked?—this door? Why, the key has been lost for months.”
“I cannot help it,” I protested, but with little if any asperity, for it did not suit me that she should see I was moved by any extraordinary feeling. “A key was put in that lock about midnight, and I was locked in. It was about the time some one screamed in your own part of the house.”
“Screamed?” Her brows took a fine pucker of perplexity. “Oh, that must have been Miss Lucetta.”
“Lucetta?”
“Yes, ma’am; she had an attack, I believe. Poor Miss Lucetta! She often has attacks like that.”
Confounded, for the woman spoke so naturally that only a suspicious nature like mine would fail to have been deceived by it, I raised myself on my elbow and gave her an indignant look.
“Yet you said just now that the young ladies were expecting me to breakfast.”
“Yes, and why not?” Her look was absolutely guileless. “Miss Lucetta sometimes keeps us up half the night, but she does not miss breakfast on that account. When the turn is over, she is as well as ever she was. A fine young lady, Miss Lucetta. I’d lose my two hands for her any day.”
“She certainly is a remarkable girl,” I declared, not, however, as dryly as I felt. “I can hardly believe I dreamed about the key. Let me feel of your pocket,” I laughed.
She, without the smallest hesitancy, pulled aside her apron.
“I am sorry you put so little confidence in my word, ma’am, but Lor’ me, what you heard is nothing to what some of our guests have complained of—in the days, I mean, when we did have guests. I have known them to scream out themselves in the middle of the night and vow they saw white figures creeping up and down the halls—all nonsense, ma’am, but believed in by some folks. You don’t look as if you believed in ghosts.”
“And I don’t,” I said, “not a whit. It would be a poor way to try to frighten me. How is Mr. William this morning?”
“Oh, he’s well and feeding the dogs, ma’am. What made you think of him?”
“Politeness, Hannah,” I found myself forced to say. “He’s the only man in the house. Why shouldn’t I think of him?”
She fingered her apron a minute and laughed.
“I didn’t know you liked him. He’s so rough, it isn’t everybody who understands him,” she said.
“Must one understand a person to like him?” I queried good-humoredly. I was beginning to think I might have dreamed about that key.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t always understand Miss Lucetta, but I like her through and through, ma’am, as I like this little finger,” and holding up this member to my inspection, she crossed the room for my water-pitcher, which she proposed to fill with hot water.
I followed her closely with my eyes. When she came back, I saw her attention caught by the break in the flooring, which she had not noticed on entering.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “what a shame!” her honest face coloring as she drew the rug back over the small black gap. “I am sure, ma’am,” she cried, “you must think very poorly of us. But I assure you, ma’am, it’s honest poverty, nothing but honest poverty as makes them so neglectful,” and with an air as far removed from mystery as her frank, good-natured manner seemed to be from falsehood, she slid from the room with a kind:
“Don’t hurry, ma’am. It is Miss Knollys’ turn in the kitchen, and she isn’t as quick as Miss Lucetta.”
“Humph,” thought I, “supposing I had called in the police.”
But by the time she had returned with the water, my doubts had reawakened. She was not changed in manner, though I have no doubt she had recounted all that I had said, below, but I was, for I remembered the matches and thought I saw a way of tripping her up in her self-complacency.
Just as she was leaving me for the second time I called her back.
“What is the matter with your matches?” I asked. “I couldn’t make them light last night.”
With a wholly undisturbed countenance she turned toward the bureau and took up the china trinket that held the few remaining matches I had not scraped on the piece of sandpaper I myself had fastened up alongside the door. A sheepish cry of dismay at once escaped her.
“Why, these are old matches!” she declared, showing me the box in which a half-dozen or so burned matches stood with their burned tops all turned down.
“I thought they were all right. I’m afraid we are a little short of matches.”
I did not like to tell her what I thought about it, but it made me doubly anxious to join the young ladies at breakfast and judge for myself from their conduct and expression if I had been deceived by my own fears into taking for realities the phantasies of a nightmare, or whether I was correct in ascribing to fact that episode of the key with all the possibilities that lay behind it.
I did not let my anxiety, however, stand in the way of my duty. Mr. Gryce had bid me carry the whistle he had sent me constantly about my person, and I felt that he would have the right to reproach me if I left my room without making some endeavor to recover this lost article. How to do this without aid or appliances of any kind was a problem. I knew where it was, but I could not see it, much less reach it. Besides,