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.
CHAPTER XXIV.
I gave one cry as my candle fell, and then, instinctively shutting my eyes, as if to hide from myself the dreadful fact that I was in darkness, I felt my way up the ladder out of that dreadful cellar into the store-room above. It was seven o’clock, and only just enough light came through the one little grated window high up in the wall for me to see that there was a window there. But, once on the store-room floor, I crawled cautiously round the square hole I had come up through until I came to the door, which I shut down with a strong sense of relief. Then I groped about, stumbling over hampers and boxes now and then, and scarcely able to repress a cry at each fresh obstruction, until I came at last to the door. I had left it unlocked; and the moment after I touched the handle I was on the other side. Luckily I had slipped the keys into my pocket at first sight of the black bag; and, after long but impatient fumbling, I managed in the dark to fit in the right one and to turn the lock securely. Then I groped my way along the passage; and I never in all my life felt such a thrill of heart-felt thankfulness as I did when the great baize-covered door swung to behind me, and I found myself once more in the lighted hall.
I flung myself into a chair, overwrought and exhausted by what I had suffered in the left wing, and it was not for some minutes that I noticed an envelope directed simply, in Mrs. Manners’s handwriting, to “Miss Christie, The Alders,” which lay on the table beside me. I tore it open, and, scarcely glancing at her kind little note saying she had received the enclosed when she called at the Beaconsburgh post-office that afternoon, pressed Laurence’s letter to my lips again and again before I opened it. It said—
“Nice, Friday.
“My own sweet Violet,—I had hoped to find a letter from you waiting for me on my arrival here; but I know very well it is not your fault that I am disappointed, even if I do not hear from you for a whole week—for I will never doubt my darling again. I have had the battle with my mother prematurely, and gained the victory. I intended, as you know, to break my resolution to her gently; but she herself hurried the dénouement. We broke the journey at Paris, stopping there last night. As soon as we got there, I opened my writing-case and wrote a tiny note to my darling, just to tell you how I walked up and down the deck of the steamer and sat in a railway-carriage, thinking of you and the last look I had into your beautiful loving gray eyes in the drive on Tuesday night—such a long time ago it seems! I left the room for a minute to order something to eat, with my letter closed up and directed to you on the table, ready to be enclosed to Mrs. Manners. When I came back, I found my mother there; she had torn open my letter and was reading it. Then we had a scene. I asked for my letter, and she tore it up and flung it into the fireplace, with some words about you that sent my forbearance to the winds, and I told her she was speaking about my future wife.
“ ‘Your future wife,’ answered she, drawing herself up to her full height and rolling out her voice in a way that always reduces my father to nothingness, ‘is Miss Langham of Greytowers.’
“ ‘You have been misinformed, mother. In such a matter it is always best to get your information at first hand. Your future daughter-in-law is Miss Violet Christie, the most beautiful girl in Norfolk or out of it. And as for Miss Langham, if you are so bent upon having her for a daughter-in-law, and she doesn’t mind waiting, you can save her up for Jack.’
“I expected a lot more nonsense; but she was so much taken by surprise that that speech broke the back of the difficulty; and now, though she receives all my attentions frigidly and we are getting along very uncomfortably, she knows her control over her eldest son is at an end. I only wish, my darling, that my promise to my father had not prevented my telling her this while we were still in England, for I begin to fancy this journey ‘for her health’ was nothing but a trick—a plot, for there were two in it—for getting me away from you. However, I suppose I must live through the two months now somehow, as I promised her. She will keep me to that.
“But I am in a fever of anxiety about you. I will not distress you by a lot of vague suspicions that are rising in my mind to torture me; but I beg of you, my beautiful gentle love, to let me know every little event that happens at the Alders. I pray Heaven you may have very little to tell. And now I entreat you to comply with this my earnest, solemn request. Don’t trust your letters to any one to post—don’t even post them yourself—but give them to my youngest sister, to send on to me. She teaches in the Sunday-school. Get Mrs. Manners to send you up to the Hall on some pretext on Sunday; get Maud alone, and you will find she will do what you ask. Tell her to remember her last promise to me in the conservatory, and I’ll remember mine.
“Keep this letter where no one can get at it—not in a desk—if you don’t tear it up. I feel already such a hunger for a sight of your sweet face—I can’t think of the touch of your little clinging hands about my throat without the tears rising to my eyes. I think I must jump into the sea if I cannot find some means of getting back to you sooner. Good-by; Heaven bless you! Write to me; don’t forget. Keep safe and well, till you are once again in the arms of
“Yours devotedly for ever and ever,
“Laurence.”
It was new life to me, it was heart-felt unutterable joy, to read this and put my cheek against the signature, to tuck it inside my gown and feel that I was in possession of the most precious treasure the whole world could produce, the first real long letter from the man I loved.
I went into the dining-room, took it out again, and began kissing each line in turn, I was so silly with happiness. I had got to the middle of the second page in this fashion, when the iron bar which fastened the shutters suddenly fell down and swung backwards and forwards almost without noise. I thrust my letter hastily back into my gown and stared at the shutters, too much startled to think what could be the reason of this, when one of them slid softly back, and a man was in the room before I could get to the door. With a cry of relief, I sprang towards him.
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, how you frightened me! I thought you were a burglar.”