"Who is hushing it up?" asked Mrs. Darling, from between her white lips.
"Mr. Pym, for one. I say nothing about others, I am only one amongst them. From this time I shall drop the matter, and speak of it no more: but I should like you to remember what I say, and to believe me. It is the truth. Heaven knows it is. The doors were fastened upon him, and he was left there--in a living tomb--to burn to death. When the facts come to light, as they will sometime, if there's justice in the world, we shall learn the truth. At present I don't pretend to understand it."
Mrs. Darling felt frightened at the girl's words, at her resolute manner (her impassiveness had now changed to passion), at her hectic cheeks and wild eyes--all the symptoms of threatening fever or insanity. She quitted the room, retaining a last glimpse of Honour's throwing herself beside the trestles in a burst of anguish, and sought Prance. Scarcely able to speak from an agitation which she vainly endeavoured to suppress, Mrs. Darling commanded Prance to furnish her with the particulars, to the minutest detail.
Prance obeyed without the slightest hesitation, her account differing in no wise from the one she had just given to the coroner and jury. Mrs. Darling questioned her as to the alleged fastening of the doors: Prance maintained that the one door, at any rate, had been fastened in Honour's fancy only. It was possible, nay probable, that the poor little boy had himself fastened the one; but as to the other, nothing but Honour's haste (as she, Prance, believed) had prevented her opening it. "The fact is," concluded Prance, "Honour was half paralyzed with fear at the time, through smelling the burning; and she has been as one mad ever since."
"And your mistress was shut up, I hear, in the dining-room all the time with little George."
"Oh yes," said Prance, "and the servants were shut up downstairs. Nobody could have gone near the room. If that door was fastened, why, the bolt must have slipped as well as the latch when the child closed it," added Prance. "The coroner and jury thought so."
Mrs. Darling sighed in very perplexity. She could not get over Honour's positive and solemn assertion; but it seemed equally impossible to believe any one had been near the door to bolt it. This last suggestion, that the bolt had slipped, was a welcome one, and Mrs. Darling would have given half her remaining lifetime to have been able fully to believe in it.
There went forth another announcement in the local papers, Mrs. Darling wording it.
"Died, on St. Martin's Eve, at Alnwick Hall, on his fifth birthday, Benjamin Carleton St. John, eldest son and heir of the late George Carleton St. John, Esquire."