I rose to rest myself. Then it suddenly occurred to me that the cellar must have a window. Skirting the house cautiously, I at last came to it. But it was closed and curtained so effectually that only a faint glimmer here and there betrayed the light within. I listened, but could hear no sound.
Fairly nonplussed, I returned to the hedge and sat down against it to consider. The shadow had given me no indication of whether the worker was man or woman; yet to the first question I had asked myself there could be only one answer. It was one or both of the Kingdon women who were working in the cellar—both, I finally decided, since it was improbable that one could spend the night there without the knowledge of the other. But what were they doing?
To this I could find no answer. It was not merely an errand, because the light remained. Minute after minute I sat there, until I heard a clock somewhere strike two, and still the light remained. I crept forward to the ventilator and peered through again. The shadows were moving backward and forward, just as they had been an hour before. There was something uncanny about them, and I shivered as I watched. It seemed to me that they were made by some person alternately rising and stooping, but why should any one do that for hours at a time? Some subtle association of ideas brought before my eyes the vision which had confronted Jean Valjean on that night when he had peered through the grated window into the Convent of Little Picpus—the dim light, the vast hall, the motionless figure on the floor before the cross. Was some such explanation to be sought here? Were these long-continued risings and stoopings a series of genuflexions before some shrine—a penance, perhaps, imposed for some transgression? The thought seemed absurd. But I could think of no other explanation of these singular motions.
At last, weary with long staring, I went back to my seat beside the hedge and waited. Half an hour passed, then I saw the glimmer at the ventilator suddenly disappear, and a moment later, a light gleamed through the kitchen window. It went on toward the front of the house, and I saw the shadow of a woman's figure on the blind as it passed the window in front of me. Only one shadow—there was only one woman in the house, or, at least, only one awake and moving about. There had been only one in the cellar.
My resolution was taken. I went straight forward to the door at the side of the house and knocked sharply. At the same instant, the light vanished. I waited a moment, then knocked again, more loudly.
"Who's there?" called a voice, so harsh, so fierce, that it fairly startled me.
"Open the door," I said. "I wish to see Miss Lawrence."
"This is not Miss Lawrence's home," cried the voice.
"I know it; but she's here."
"She's not here!" and the voice rose to a scream. "Be off, or I'll fire through the door!"