This delay for a week was because Sophy was daily expecting to be confined, and Robert was determined to wait till that was over. However, on the very next day a son was born to Sophy, who, as she received it, thanked God that now at least she had a comfort who would be always with her, and which nothing but death could take away. She felt that her days would be no longer long and joyless, for she would have a true pleasure—something she could constantly pet and care for.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COUP DE MAIN.
It was two o'clock in the morning; Miss Harmer was at her devotions. Half her nights were so spent. Not that she felt any more need for prayer than she had formerly done, nor that she had one moment's remorse or compunction concerning the course she had adopted; in that respect she was in her own mind perfectly justified. He whom she had looked up to for so many years for counsel and advice, he who to her represented the Church, had enjoined her to act as she had done, had assured her that she was so acting for the good of the Church, and that its blessing and her eternal happiness were secured by the deed; and she did not for an instant doubt him. The only moment that she had wavered, the only time she had ever questioned whether she was doing right, was when Polly Ashleigh had so vividly described the chamber, and when it had seemed to her that the secret was in the course of being revealed by dreams. She thought it altogether natural and right that the estate of her Catholic ancestors—the estate which her elder brother had actually devised to the Church, and which had been only diverted from that destination by what she considered an actual interposition of the evil one himself—should go as they had intended. So that she never questioned in her own mind the right or justice of the course she had taken.
Miss Harmer rose at night to pray, simply because she had been taught in the stern discipline of the convent in which she had been brought up and moulded to what she was, that it was right to pass a part of the night in prayer, and she had never given up the custom. And, indeed, it was not merely from the force of custom that she made her devotions; for she prayed, and prayed earnestly, and with all her strength, prayed for the increase and triumph of the Church, that all nations and people might be brought into its fold, and that God would show forth His might and power upon its enemies. On this night she was more wakeful than usual, for the wind was blowing strongly round the old walls of Harmer Place, and sounded with a deep roar in its great chimneys. This was always pleasant music to her; for she, like her dead brothers, loved the roar and battle of the elements, and the fierce passionate spirit within her seemed to swell and find utterance in the burst of the storm.
Suddenly she paused in the midst of her devotions; for amidst the roar and shriek of the wind she thought she heard the wild cry of a person in distress. She listened awhile; there was no repetition of the sound, and again she knelt, and tried to continue her prayers; but tried in vain: she could not divest herself of the idea that it was a human cry, and she again rose to her feet. Stories she had heard of burglaries and robbers came across her. She knew that there was a good deal of valuable plate in the house; and then the thought, for the first time, occurred to her, that perhaps it was her sister's voice that she had heard. She did not hesitate an instant now, but went to a table placed against the bed on which lay two pistols: curious articles to be found in a lady's bedroom, and that lady more than seventy years old. But Miss Harmer was prepared for an emergency like this. For the last year Father Eustace had been warning her of the danger of it; not perhaps that he had any idea that a burglary would actually be attempted, but he wished to be resident in the house, and to this, with her characteristic obstinacy when she had once made up her mind to anything, she refused to assent. The Harmers' chaplains she said never had been resident; there was a house in the village belonging to them, which they had built specially for their chaplains to reside in, and which they had so inhabited for more than a hundred years, and she did not see why there should be any change now. Father Eustace had urged that the sisters slept in a part of the building far removed from the domestics, and that if the house were entered by burglars they might not be heard even if they screamed ever so loud.
"I am not likely to scream, although I am an old woman," Miss Harmer had answered grimly; and the only result of Father Eustace's warning had been, that Miss Harmer had ordered a brace of her brother's pistols to be cleaned and loaded, and placed on the table at her bedside; and it was the duty of the gardener to discharge and reload these pistols every other morning, so that they might be in perfect order if required.
Miss Harmer's pistols were rather a joke among the servants; and yet they all agreed that if the time ever did come when she would be called upon to use them, the stern old woman would not hesitate or flinch for a moment in so doing.
So with a pistol in one hand, and a candle in the other, Miss Harmer went out of her door and along the short corridor which led to her sister's bedroom—a strange gaunt figure, in a long white dress covering her head—in fact a nun's attire, which she put on when she prayed at night, and from underneath which the stiff white frills of her cap bristled out strangely. She walked deliberately along, for she believed that she was only deceiving herself, and that the cry which she had thought she heard was only a wilder gust of wind among the trees. When she reached her sister's door, she paused and listened. Then she started back, for within she could hear low murmured words in men's voices, and then a strange stifled cry: she hesitated but for one moment, to deliberate whether she should go back to fetch the other pistol—then that strange cry came up again, and she threw open the door and entered. She was prepared for something, but for nothing so terrible as met her eyes. The room was lighted by the two candles which still burned in a little oratory at one end of the room before a figure of the Virgin; a chair lay overturned near it, and it was evident that Angela Harmer had, like her sister, been engaged at her devotions when her assailants had entered the room, and when she had given that one loud cry which had at last brought her sister to her assistance. But all this Cecilia Harmer did not notice then, her eyes were fixed on the group in the middle of the room.