Modern Flirtations. Sinclair Catherine
In one apartment on the garret floor, belonging, as the terrified housemaid declared, to a person who had been taken in, she believed out of charity, to teach the little boy, the bed was disordered, as if the sleeper, when hastily rising, had thrown the bed-clothes almost upon the floor. The window-frame was broken to shivers, by some one violently forcing his way out; but no other sign appeared of the room having been inhabited. Not an article of clothing could be found in the drawers; not a book or a paper; and the search was about to be abandoned, when Sir Arthur perceived in an obscure corner of the room, a man's glove, stained with blood, and a red silk handkerchief, from which the initials had evidently been erased with great care, though he hoped that some one more accustomed to such investigations might yet be able to trace them.
The next room which Sir Arthur attempted to enter had the door double-locked; and though the party which accompanied him made a noise of knocking and hammering that might have raised the dead, no answer was returned, till at length, losing all patience, they broke it open, and impetuously rushed forward, all gazing eagerly around, as if they expected an immediate denouement of the mystery to take place; but some of those who were foremost shrunk back in astonishment, and hastily made way for Sir Arthur, while the servant girl earnestly whispered in his ear, with a look of anxiety and alarm, "This is Sarah Davenport's room! the child's maid! Better not disturb her, Sir! She is sometimes hardly right in her mind I think!"
When Sir Arthur, disregarding the simple girl's warning, advanced, he perceived with surprise a very young woman, scarcely twenty, who started up in bed, with a look of bewildered perplexity, as he approached, asking in accents of tremulous alarm, what had occurred to cause this extraordinary disturbance. Her cheek was of an ashy paleness, her very lips were blanched, and her voice sounded husky and hollow with agitation; but all this might be attributed to so sudden an inroad of strangers, while again and again she asked with quivering accents, whether any accident had occurred, and why they all appeared so alarmed.
"At all events, my darling boy is safe!" added she, holding out her arms to the child, who instantly recoiled from her, with looks of unequivocal terror, and hiding his face on the shoulder of Sir Arthur, he sobbed aloud with a degree of passionate grief and agitation which seemed almost beyond his years. The observant eye of Sir Arthur perceived that a dark scowl of malignity flitted for a moment across the beautiful features of Sarah, whose brow became singularly contracted over her flashing eyes; but making an effort instantly to recover herself, she averted her countenance, and added in a subdued voice of assumed tranquillity, "The child never knows me in a cap! I forgot to take it off, but the hurry of seeing so many strangers has confused me!"
In an instant she snatched off her night-cap, when her shoulders and neck became covered with a cloud of dark massy ringlets, floating down below her waist, and shading her pallid countenance, which had assumed an expression of livid horror, and unnatural wildness. "Let him come to me now!" added she again, stretching out her arms with a ghastly smile; but the boy struggled more vehemently than before, and clung to Sir Arthur with a tenacity and confidence, which deeply touched the old veteran's heart, who tried to soothe the terrified child by every endearment which his kind nature could suggest, while his attention was nevertheless enchained by observing the rigid, marble look of the young woman's countenance; the dragged and corpse-like appearance which stole over her features, as if she had suffered a stroke of paralysis.
"You have been frightened enough already, poor boy!" said Sir Arthur, soothingly. "No one shall hurt you! With me at least you are safe! Stay where you are, and do not be alarmed! No one shall touch you but myself!"
The child seemed to understand Sir Arthur's promise of protection, and his head drooped sleepily down, while his eyes again closed in that deep unnatural slumber, from which he had been with so much difficulty aroused, till at length,
"Now like a shutting flower, the senses close,
And on him lies the beauty of repose."
"Young woman!" said Sir Arthur, bending a look of penetrating scrutiny on Sarah Davenport, "how came you to be quietly asleep, and partly dressed too! while your mistress was murdered in the room immediately below! Did you hear no disturbance? Was no alarm given?"
"My mistress!" exclaimed Sarah, clasping her hands in an attitude of astonishment, and speaking as if every word would choke her, though not a muscle of her face was altered from the fixed and rigid look it had previously worn. "Oh! what will become of me!"
"What will become of you!" exclaimed Sir Arthur sternly, fixing his penetrating eye upon her. "Think rather of your murdered mistress! Come, come, girl! you performed that start very well; but I know good acting! I greatly fear you are more concerned in this horrid business than we at first suspected, and much more than you would wish to acknowledge. Get up instantly, and follow me!"
There was something fearful and appalling in the silence which reigned among the many persons who had gathered around, when Sarah, as a prisoner, was led into the chamber of death. A look of shuddering horror distorted for a moment her pale and haggard countenance, when she was unwillingly drawn forward to the place where her deceased mistress lay, and Sir Arthur, with silent solemnity, pointed to the ghastly spectacle. His eyes were intensely and most mournfully fixed on the prisoner's sullen and nearly livid countenance, while she silently clung to a chair to support herself.
Sarah appeared neither startled nor astonished after the first thrill of horror, but with a cold stony look of almost preternatural calmness, she muttered to herself in a low tone, which became nevertheless distinctly audible to all the spectators, and was evidently meant to be heard—
"Why am I brought here! I know nothing, about this! The poor lady has committed suicide! No wonder! She often wished herself dead! She had a miserable life of it, and has got rest at last! I wish!" added Sarah suddenly, with vehement, almost frantic energy, "O how I wish that I could change places with her! O that I could be that cold, senseless image, without memory or feeling, without hope or fear, shut up from living wretchedness in everlasting sleep!"
"Let us hope that the Almighty has in mercy received her never-dying soul, and that in His own good time He will reveal the guilty assassins who sent her so suddenly to judgment," said Sir Arthur solemnly. "Unburden your own mind now, by confessing all, and be assured it will relieve the agony you are so evidently suffering. Murder is like fire, it cannot be smothered long."
"I know nothing! What could I know!" replied Sarah hurriedly. "She has destroyed herself, or thieves have broken into the house and robbed her. Could I help that?"
"No one has broken into this house," replied Sir Arthur, scanning the expression of her fixed and apparently unalterable features. "But you can perhaps tell us who escaped by that shattered window above? Not a lock is broken—not a door is injured—not a trinket seems missing, among the many scattered around the room. Here is money in abundance, if gold had been the inducement! Some other motive has provoked this crime—jealousy perhaps—or revenge——"
At the last word an angry hectic rushed over the face, arms, and neck of the prisoner, and her eye glittered for a moment with an unnatural fire, which rapidly faded away, leaving her as pale and death-like as the corpse beside which she stood, and on which her eye now rested with a look of cold and passionless indifference.
"It was only yesterday that she wished herself dead! this is her own doing!" said Sarah, turning away. "Why am I brought here! This is too dreadful! too shocking! It will drive me mad—it will! it will!" added she, with rising agitation; and then suddenly bursting in a hideous maniacal laugh, which rang with fearful sound through the gloomy chamber, and caused the horror-struck spectators to fall hastily back, "I would have saved her! I would! What woman ever sheds blood! but it was too late! I would have saved her, as I saved the child; but it was done—kill me! kill me! if you have any mercy, let me die! let me hide myself in the grave for ever!" Saying these words, with a scream of agony, she fell upon the floor in violent convulsions, from which it was nearly an hour before she entirely recovered, when faint, weak, and exhausted, Sir Arthur suggested that she could be carried to bed; but before she left the room, anxious, if possible, to elucidate the mystery, and to gain some clue for pursuing the actual murderer, he detained Sarah during a moment, and desired that