When Mr. Pym got back to the corridor, he found the dismayed watchers and waiters outside it, Mrs. Darling and Prance, had been joined by another--Honour Tritton.
It is not possible for a commotion such as this to occur in a house without its sounds transpiring to the household. Quietly as these knockings and callings had been carried on, news of them penetrated to the servants below. "Mrs. Carleton had bolted herself in her chamber, and could not be got at." Honour, in her interest, it may be in her curiosity, went upstairs at once. Perhaps she deemed she had a sort of right to do so, from her former relations with Mrs. Carleton.
Mr. Pym scarcely noticed her. The noise inside the room had increased; that is, the pacings to and fro were louder and quicker. Mrs. Darling clasped her hands in helpless dismay: she lifted her imploring face to the surgeon; she put her lips to the key-hole for the twentieth time.
"Charlotte! my darling Charlotte! I want to come in. I must come in. I--I have left a key in your room. It will soon be time to dress for dinner."
There was no response. But the pacings increased to a run. The dull day had become darker, and Honour turned into Miss Beauclerc's room, and brought out a tall wax candle, lighted, in a silver candlestick.
"Mrs. Carleton, I must beg of you to unlock the door," cried out the surgeon. "If you do not, I shall be compelled to break it open. Pray undo it."
It was of no avail. A mocking laugh was again heard, but there was no other response.
"Take care of yourselves," said Mr. Pym.
The door flew open with a burst. The first object they saw was Mrs. Carleton, standing against the opposite wall and glaring at them. Glaring! the word has been used often in regard to her eyes at times, but there is no other so applicable. Mr. Pym went straight up to her. She eluded him with a spring, pounced upon the unsuspecting and terrified Honour, and in another moment was grappling with her, a fight for dear life.
Poor lady! What her thoughts had been during that self-imprisonment she alone knew. That they had tended rapidly to increase the mind's confusion, to speed her on to the great gulf of insanity, already so near at hand, perhaps to have been its very turning-point, there could be no doubt of. And it may be that the sight of Honour amidst her enemies, of Honour bearing a lighted candle, recalled her mind to that dreadful night not yet two years gone by.