CHAPTER LXIII.
WILLIAM MAUBRAY IS TORMENTED
On the little table at his bedside, where his candle stood, to his surprise, on awakening, he saw one of the boots which he had put off in the passage on the previous night. There it was, no possible mistake about it; and what was more it was placed like one of his ornamental bronze weights; one of those indeed was fashioned like a buskin upon some papers.
What were these papers? With growing amazement he saw that they were precisely those which he had been reading the night before, and had carefully locked up in his desk—poor Aunt Dinah’s warning letter—and his own notes of her threatening words!
It was little past seven now; he had left his shutters open as usual. Had he really locked his door? No doubt upon that point. The key was inside, and the door locked. The keys of his desk, what of them? There they were precisely where he had left them, on the chimney-piece. This certainly was very odd. Who was there in the house to play him such a trick? No one could have opened his door; his key stuck in the lock on the inside; and how else could anyone have entered? Who was there to conceive such a plot? and by what ingenuity could any merry devil play it off? And who could know what was passing in his mind? Here was a symbol such as he could not fail to interpret. The heel of his boot on the warnings and entreaties of his poor dead aunt! could anything be more expressive?
William began to feel very oddly. He got on his clothes quickly, and went down to the drawing-room. His desk was just as he had placed it; he unlocked it; his papers were not disturbed; nothing apparently had been moved but the letter and his diary.
William sat down utterly puzzled, and looked at the black japanned cabinet, with its straggling bass-reliefs of golden Chinamen, pagodas, and dragons glimmering in the cold morning light, with more real suspicion than he had ever eyed it before.
Old Winnie thought that day that Mr. William was unusually “dull.” The fact is, that he was beginning to acquire, not a hatred, but a fear of Gilroyd, and to revolve in his mind thoughts of selling the old house and place, or letting it, and getting out of reach of its ambiguous influences. He was constantly thinking over these things, puzzling his brain over an inscrutable problem, still brooding over the strange words of Aunt Dinah, “A mocking spirit; I’ll trouble; I’ll torment you. You shan’t escape me. Though I be dead, I’ll watch you as an old gray cat watches a mouse. If you so much as think of it, I’ll plague you!” and so forth.