A Queen's Error. Henry Curties
which struggled in through the dirty pane of glass over the door.
"Now," she added, "I will get a light."
She passed me and went to the hall table on which stood one of those candlesticks in which the candle is protected by a glass chimney. She struck a match and lighted a candle. "Now if you please," she added, going on before me down the dark passage. I saw now from her tottering walk that she was much older and much more feeble than I had imagined. I followed her and saw signs of dust and neglect on every side; the house, I should say, had stood empty for many years. But as I followed the old lady one thing struck me, and that was, that instead of the common candle which I would have expected her to use under the circumstances, the one she carried in its glass protector was evidently of fine wax. She took me down a long passage, and we came to a flight of stairs leading to the kitchens, I imagined.
"We must go down here," she announced. "I am sorry to have to take you to the basement, but it cannot be helped." Again I had some slight misgivings, but I braced myself. I had made up my mind and I would go forward.
I followed her as she went laboriously step by step down the flight. At the bottom was the usual long basement passage, such as I expected to see, but with this difference, it was swept and evidently well kept.
The old lady led on to the extreme end of this passage towards the back of the house, then opened a door on the left hand and walked in. At her invitation I followed her and found her busily lighting more wax candles fixed in old-fashioned sconces on the walls. As each candle burned up I was astonished to find the sort of room it revealed to me.
It was a lady's boudoir beautifully furnished and filled with works of art; china, choice pictures, and old silver abounded on every side; on the hearth burned a bright fire; on the mantelpiece was a very handsome looking-glass framed in oak. My companion, having lit six candles, went to the windows to draw down the blinds. I interposed and saved her this exertion by doing it myself.
I then became aware that the house, like so many others in Bath, was built on the side of a hill, the front door being on a level with the street, whilst the lower back windows even commanded lovely views over the beautiful valley, the town, and the distant hills beyond.
Below me innumerable lights twinkled out in the streets through the misty air, while here and there brightly lit tram cars wound through the town or mounted the hills. Thick though the air was the sight was exceedingly pretty.
I could now understand how even a room situated as this was in the basement of a house could become habitable and pleasant. The voice of the old lady recalled me to myself as I pulled down the last blind.
"I am sorry to have to bring you down here," she said. "It is hardly the sort of room in which a lady usually receives visitors, but you will perhaps understand my liking for it when I tell you that I have lived here many years."
The information surprised me.
"Whatever induced you to do that?" I asked without thinking, then recollected that I had no right to ask the question. "You must excuse my question," I added, "but I fear you find it very lonely unless you have some one living with you?"
"I live here," she replied, "absolutely alone, and yet I am never lonely."
"You have some occupation?" I suggested.
"Yes," she replied, "I write for the newspapers."
This piece of information astounded me more than ever. I imagined it to be the last place from which "copy" would emanate for the present go-ahead public prints, and the old lady to be the last person who could supply it.
She saw my puzzled look, and came to my aid with further information.
"Not the newspapers of this country," she added, "the newspapers of—of foreign countries."
I was more satisfied with this answer; the requirements of most foreign journals had not appeared to me to be excessive.
"I too am a brother of the pen," I answered, "I write books of sorts."
The old lady broke into a very sweet smile which lighted up her charming old face.
"Permit me to shake hands," she suggested, "with a fellow-sufferer in the cause of Literature."
I took her hand and noted its soft elegance, old though she was.
She crossed to a carved cupboard which was fixed in the wall, and took from it a tiny Venetian decanter, two little glasses, and a silver cigarette case.
"We must celebrate this meeting," she suggested with another smile, "as disciples of the pen."
She filled the two little glasses with what afterwards proved to be yellow Chartreuse, and held one glass towards me.
"Pray take this," she suggested, "it will be good for you after being out in the damp air."
I took the tiny glass of yellow liqueur in which the candlelight sparkled, and sipped it; it was superb.
"Now," she continued, indicating an armchair on the farther side of the fireplace, "sit and let us talk."
I took the chair, and she opened the silver box of cigarettes and pushed them towards me.
"I presume you smoke?" she suggested. "I smoke myself habitually; I find it a great resource and comfort. I lived for a long time in a country where all the ladies smoked."
I took a cigarette, lit a match, and handed her a light; she lit her cigarette with a grace born of long habit.
"Now," she said, as I puffed contentedly, "I can tell you what I have to say in comfort."
I certainly thought I had made a good exchange from the raw air of the street to this comfortable fireside.
"It will not interest you now," she continued, "to hear the reasons which have moved me to live here so long as I have done; that is a story which would take too long to tell you. All the preamble I wish to make to my remark is this; that the favour I shall ask of you is one that you can fulfil without the slightest injury to your honour. On the contrary it will be an act of kindness and humanity which no one in the world could object to."
"I feel sure of that," I interposed with a bow, "you need not say another word on that point."
I was really quite falling in love with the old lady, and her old-world courtesy of manner.
"I will then come straight to the point," she proceeded, taking a curious key from her pocket; it was a key with a finely-wrought handle in which was the letter C.
"I want you to open a secret drawer in this room, which, since its hiding-place was contrived, has been known only to me and to one other, the workman who made it, a Belgian long since dead. Please take this key."
I took it.
"Now," she continued, "cast your eyes round this room, and see if you can detect where the secret safe is hidden."
I looked round the room as she wished, and could see nothing which gave me the slightest clue to it.
"No," I said, "I can see nothing which has any resemblance to a safe."
She laughed, and, rising from her seat, turned to the fireplace and touched a carved rose in the frame of the handsome over-mantel; immediately the looking-glass moved up by itself in its frame, disclosing, apparently, the bare wall.
"Please watch me," proceeded the old lady.
She placed her finger on a certain part of the pattern of the wall paper beneath, and the whole of that part of the pattern swung forward; behind was a safe, apparently of steel, evidently a piece of foreign workmanship.
"Please place the key in the lock, and turn it," she asked, "but do not open the safe."
I regarded her proceedings with much interest, and rose from my chair and did as she asked.
"Thank you," she said, when she heard the lock click and the bolts shoot back, "now will you