CHAPTER XXIII.
All the stairs below where Sarah had slipped were safe and in their usual state. At the bottom, an almost senseless heap, lay Sarah, with one arm twisted under her and her head in a pool of blood. She was moaning, with closed eyes, and did not know me even when her eyes opened and she stared round her.
The noise of her fall had by this time brought out Jane from the distant nursery; and she ran for the cook, who was an older and more experienced woman, and who indeed proved useful in this emergency. It was past midnight; but, late as it was, I was obliged to send Jane into the village for Sam, to tell him to take one of the horses and ride as fast as he could to Beaconsburgh for the Doctor. Meanwhile the cook declared her belief that one of Sarah’s arms was broken, for she fainted when it was touched; and then, having discovered that the blood was flowing from a great gash at the back of her head, she bound it up as well as she could to stop the bleeding. Then I ran downstairs for some brandy, which we put to her lips from time to time, but in vain tried to make her swallow. And then we sat in the cold, in the dim light of a candle, both of us crouched on the floor, the cook supporting the wounded woman against her knee, I a little way behind, lest she should recover full consciousness and know me.
It was a ghastly thing to be sitting there with that horrid stain on the floor within a few feet, listening to the feeble moans of the wretched woman whom we hardly expected to live until help came, holding our breath when for a few moments the moaning ceased, I thinking of the awful retribution her malice had brought down upon her, not daring to speak to tell her I forgave her, lest my voice should have some terrible effect upon her wandering mind. And so we sat shivering not with cold alone, until the front-door bell sounded through the silent house, and Jane, who had not dared to come upstairs again since she went to send off Sam, opened the door, and we heard the Doctor’s heavy tread on the stairs.
It was Doctor Lowe. He called first for more light. Jane brought a lamp, and he signed to her to go away. After asking me whether I was hysterical, and hearing me answer “No,” he told me to hold the lamp while he made his examination. He said afterwards that I had strong nerves; but nothing but fear of him kept me steady at my post, as, with averted head, I heard the sharp little cries the wounded woman gave two or three times. The cook had been right; the arm that lay under Sarah was broken; the Doctor could not tell yet whether her spine was not injured too. He cut off her long black hair and strapped up her head, which had received a gash which might affect the brain, he said; and he set and bandaged the broken arm. Then we brought a mattress, and very carefully lifted her on to it, carried her to her room, and put her on the bed.
“Who is going to sit up with her?” asked he.
“I will,” said I, but added doubtfully, “if—”
“If what?” said the Doctor, turning upon me sharply.
I drew him a little apart and said—
“Doctor Lowe, do you think the sight of any one she disliked very much would be bad for her?”
He looked at me very keenly as he answered—
“No. She won’t be able to recognize anybody; but I warn you she will be restless. How did the accident happen?”
“She fell downstairs.”
“The staircase leads to your room, doesn’t it? How came she to be there at this time of night? Why don’t you tell me the truth, and save me the trouble of making stupid guesses?”
I told him the truth, and his only comment was—
“And don’t you think the moral of that is that you should leave this place as soon as possible?”
“I sha’n’t stay here long,” said I, smiling, and thinking of Laurence.
“Oh, you think that young f-fellow at the Hall is going to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t take a wife from this house.”
“But then you wouldn’t take a wife from anywhere, Doctor Lowe. If you did, you would think more of the girl than of the place she came from, just as Laurence does.”
“You have a sharp little tongue. I pity Laurence when he comes home late.”
He asked after Haidee; but I could not let him see her, as the staircase was not yet ready; so, after giving me instructions about the treatment of Sarah, he left the house.
There was a fire already in her room, for she was by no means the ill-used creature she liked to think herself. I seated myself in a chair beside it, prepared to watch until early morning, when the cook had promised to take my place. Before long the patient began to grow restless, as the Doctor had predicted; she turned her head from side to side, tried to raise her broken arm, which had been set and bandaged tightly down, muttering and moaning incoherently. Presently she was quite quiet, and I hoped she had gone to sleep. I think I must have dozed myself for a few minutes, when I was startled into full wakefulness by a low hoarse cry of “Jim!”
She had managed to move her head so that her great black eyes, glittering now with fever, were fixed full upon me; and my heart beat fast, for I thought she must know me. But she repeated, still staring at me—
“Jim!” Then she added in a whisper, “They are after you, Jim! It’s about the check. You must be off to-night. Go to the old place. I’ll put ’em off, and I’ll let you know.”
Then more mutterings and exclamations, and before long she began again to speak coherently—
“It’s too risky, Jim. I’ll do it, if you want me to; but it’s putting yourself in danger as well as me. All right, I’ll pass it.”
Then she broke out passionately—
“It’s an ill thing you’re going to do, James Woodfall. What do you want of a lady for a wife? Her money’s none so much, and, as for her pretty face, it’s the face of a fool. I’m twice the woman to look at that she is, and I’m only twenty-five; and I’ve stuck to you through thick and thin. Why don’t you marry me, Jim?”
And it flashed across me, as she went on addressing to me reproaches, coaxings, encouragement, and defiance, that she was living over again some long-past passages in her life—passages, I could not but gather, of a very questionable character. For it was plain that this Jim, or James Woodfall, who occupied all her thoughts had been a very bad man indeed, and that Sarah had assisted him in every way in his wicked deeds.
“Don’t go for that, James,” she said once imploringly. “It’ll be a lifer if they catch you; and they’ve had their eye on you lately. There’s many a safer way of getting money than that.”
Another pause, and then came a speech which chilled me with horror.
“Dead men tell no tales, Jim,” said she, in another fearful whisper. “It’s easy done, and it’s safer. What’s an old man’s life that you’re so shy of touching him? You’ve done many a riskier thing. Why do you always turn coward at that?”
I could scarcely sit and watch this woman-fiend after that. I seemed to see murder in her fierce fiery eyes; and I shuddered even as I moistened her dry lips and touched her burning forehead. She rambled on in the same style, mentioning other names I had never heard, and not a word of me or Mr. and Mrs. Rayner, or even of Tom Parkes, until she broke out angrily—
“Jim’s mad about that little Christie girl, Tom, and he says he’ll marry her in spite of everything, and I’ve got to bring it about,” she hissed between her teeth.
What awful confusion in her mind was there to connect me with her criminal lover of years before? There suddenly woke up in my mind the remembrance of the evening when, hidden in my “nest,” I had overheard a conversation between her and Mr. Rayner’s mysterious visitor, who had afterwards turned out to be Mr. Carruthers’s man-servant, and I remembered that she had then expressed jealousy of some man called “Jim.” Was it the same man? How was it that he never appeared? I had thought at the time that she must mean Tom Parkes, and that the woman she was jealous of was Jane; but, on the whole, she got on well with Jane; and the only person in the house against whom her animosity took any serious form was myself. And now she fancied this “Jim” wanted to marry me—and I had never even seen him!
She was rambling again into the present, though, for the next speech that caught my attention was—
“It’s a good weight, Tom—Jim might have lent you a hand. The water’s deep in the cellar; but it won’t hurt the jewels, and the plate’ll clean. Come on.”
Was it the Denham Court robbery that was on her mind now? I held my breath while she went on—
“Tom, that sneaking Christie girl’s got wind of it somehow. Jim’s that gone on her he won’t listen to me; and, if I don’t prevent it, she’ll be his ruin.”
Again that strange confusion of my name with that of the unknown Jim! My brain seemed to be getting as much confused as her own. I held tightly to the arms of my chair as I listened to her ravings, as if in a futile attempt to steady body and mind. I was mad to discover who this James Woodfall was, and I left my chair, and drew, as if fascinated, nearer to the bed as she said—
“Take care, Jim. You risk too much. There must be some thief-taker in the world clever enough to recognize the forger James Woodfall in the jewel-robber—”
At that moment, while I listened with pulses beating high and eager eyes for the name, the door opened, and the sick woman, distracted by the noise, cried, “What’s that?”
It was the cook come to take my place. But the reaction from the high-pressure tension of my nerves during the last few hours was too much for me. I fell fainting to the floor.
The next morning I awoke late, with a headache and an unpleasant feeling of having gone through some horrible adventure. I told Haidee, who had been very much alarmed, poor little thing, by my antics at the door when I frightened Sarah, and by the noise of her fall, a much modified story of the whole occurrence, and then ventured down the stairs very cautiously; but Jane, instructed by the cook, had already removed the grease and made them safe again.
But I never again went down those stairs at night-time without a shudder.
I telegraphed to Mr. Rayner to inform him of the accident, without, of course, mentioning the cause, as soon as the Doctor’s early visit was over—he said she was suffering from brain-fever, and ought to have a regular nurse. I received a telegram from Mr. Rayner before dinner-time—
“Am much distressed about accident. Give her every care. Have sent off an experienced nurse already.”
And by the afternoon train she arrived—a silent, middle-aged woman, the very sight of whom inspired respect, which in my case amounted to awe.
The fright in the night had made Haidee rather feverish again, so that I thought it better to delay her coming downstairs yet another day. But she got up and sat by the fire in my room, and I sat with her during a great part of the day. Just before dinner we heard a light unaccustomed step on the stairs and a knock at the door, and Mrs. Rayner came in. Seeing her in the full light of my four windows, I was shocked by the change in her since I had first come to the Alders, little more than two months before. Her cheeks were so wan and hollow, her eyes so sunken in their sockets, and her lips so drawn and livid that I seemed to be looking at the face of a dead woman. She made little reference to the previous night’s adventure, only saying—
“I hear Sarah is ill. I had to go in search of my breakfast myself this morning. I hope she is better.”
But the look on her worn face of relief from a hated burden belied her words. She had not dared even to visit her child while that harpy was about. I was sorry Sarah’s illness had been caused by me; but I could not feel much sympathy with her; her wandering speeches of the night before had shown her real cruel, vindictive self too plainly.
When we were called to dinner, which Mrs. Rayner said she would have with me to-day, I went down first, in order to leave her with her child for a few minutes. At the foot of the turret stairs, where a mat had been put to hide the traces of the horrible stain, I found the elfish Mona, as dirty as usual, playing with a large bunch of keys—Sarah’s housekeeping keys. I thought they would be safer in my care than in Mona’s; so I took them from her, not without a struggle and many tearless screams and howls on her part. I did not come much into contact with this young person now, as, when neither Mr. nor Mrs. Rayner appeared at meals, she had hers in the nursery with Jane, which she much preferred, as it did not entail so much washing and combing.
I thought to myself how much annoyed Sarah would be if she knew her keys were in my possession; but I was glad I had found them when, later in the day, after tea, Jane came to me and said Mrs. Saunders, the nurse, could not drink the draught ale from the cask, and wanted some bottled stout.
“And cook says, ‘What shall we do?’ miss. She’s making such a fuss about it.”
“Where is the bottled stout kept, Jane?” said I, thinking of my keys.
“It’s either in the cellar, miss—but Mr. Rayner keeps the key of that—or else in Sarah’s store cupboard.”
“That is in the left wing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Very well, Jane. I have found Sarah’s keys; so I will look in there and see if I can find any,” said I.
I did not much like taking this task upon myself; but it would not do to offend the nurse; and I thought it better to venture into Sarah’s domain myself than to trust the duty to Jane.
“Oh, and, if you please, Miss Christie, could you get us out some candles and some moist sugar? They are in there I know, for Sarah went to Beaconsburgh for them yesterday.”
I said I would; and, lighting a candle, I rather nervously pulled open the heavy door of the left wing and entered that mysterious part of the house sacred to Mrs. Rayner. Oh, how cold it was as the door closed behind me! I was growing nervous after the adventures I had had lately, and I did not like to hear the muffled thud of that door as it swung to after me. The store-room was the first door on the right, I knew; and I tremblingly tried the keys until I came to the one which opened it. I shivered. It was colder than ever in there, a great big bare room, with shelves and cupboards, and old hampers and boxes, and odds and ends of lumber. I could not help thinking how angry Sarah would be if she knew I was in the room, where no member of the household but herself ever ventured, and which had therefore grown into an importance it did not deserve, for it was a very ordinary apartment, and the cupboard I first opened, in search of candles and moist sugar, was a very ordinary cupboard, with the usual store of jams and pickle-jars and household stores of all kinds, except, of course, I thought angrily, as I shivered again with the cold, the candles and moist sugar of which I was in search. I opened another cupboard, I searched on the open shelves, but could not find either of the things I wanted.
At last I caught sight of a black bag lying on the floor; it looked like the very black bag Sarah had had in her hand when I saw her start for Beaconsburgh on the previous day; perhaps she had not taken her purchases out yet. I took it up; but suddenly my attention was diverted by the fact that in one of the boards of the floor on the spot where it had lain there was a tiny ring. If I had not had my attention very much on the alert in this unaccustomed place, it would have escaped my notice. As it was, I put my finger through it, and found that it raised a trap-door.
I raised it only a few inches, and shut it again directly—not that I had no curiosity about it, but that I had also some fear. An unsuspected trap-door in a house so full of surprises as the Alders had an interest of a rather appalling kind. At last I gathered up my courage, and little by little raised the door and put it right back, not without a horrid wonder whether there was any spring in it which would shut me down if I ventured on the ladder I saw below me.
The rush of cold air when the trap-door was wide open seemed to take my breath away. I held my candle over the opening, and saw that some three feet below the ladder was green and slimy, and that a foot below that there was water. Was it a well? Suddenly there flashed through my mind Sarah’s words in her delirium of the night before—“The water’s deep in the cellar.” I looked about me for something to try the depth of the water with, for go down I must. I found a rod that looked like those used for the bottom of window-blinds, and cautiously, candle in hand, ventured on the ladder. It was quite firm.
As soon as I was on the bottom dry step, the fourth from the top, I saw that I was in a large cellar, on one side of which were empty wine-bins which looked rotten and green. Above the level of the water the walls were green too. There was a tiny grating high up, from which down to the water there was a long green streak, as if water continually ran down there. I heard the drip, drip at intervals while I stayed. The cellar ran to the left—under Mrs. Rayner’s room, I suddenly thought with horror. Did she know that she might as well be living over a well? I tried the depth of the water; it was between three and four feet. Then I looked through the rungs of the ladder I was standing on, and thought I saw something behind it. Putting out my rod, I felt something soft which shook at the touch. I peered round the ladder and saw, on a big deal table the top of which had been raised to about eight or ten inches above the water’s level, the little brown portmanteau I had seen Tom Parkes carry across the lawn, the same that I had afterwards discovered inside the back-door. And I remembered now where I had seen it before—stowed away at the bottom of a cupboard in the room I had occupied at Denham Court. I knew it by an old Italian luggage-label, “Torino,” which I had noticed then.
It was within arm’s reach through the rungs of the ladder. With trembling fingers I opened it—for it was not even fastened—and, to my horror, drew out from a confusion of glittering things with which it was half filled a serpent bracelet I had seen Lady Mills wear. I put it back, closed the portmanteau with difficulty, and clung to the ladder, overwhelmed by my discovery.
Again my brain seemed to whirl round, as it had done on the previous night when Sarah had been on the point of revealing James Woodfall’s other name. My candle slipped from my fingers, fell with a hiss and a splash into the water below, and I was in darkness.