Effie Ogilvie: the story of a young life; vol. 2

by Mrs. Oliphant

As soon as she got on level ground the girl flew along, all throbbing and trembling with terror. Beyond lay the vague stretches of the park, and the house rising in the midst of the spectral river mists, soft and white, that filled it—the lights in the windows veiled and indistinct, the whole silent, like a house of shadows. Her heart failed although she went on, half flying, towards it, as to a refuge. Effie by this time had almost forgotten Fred. She had forgotten everything except the terrors of this unusual expedition, and the silence and solitude and all the weird influences that seemed to be about her. She felt as if she was outside of the world altogether, a little ghost wandering over the surface of the earth. There seemed to be no voice in her to call out for help against the darkness and the savage silence, through which she could not even hear the trickle of the stream: nothing but her own steps flying, and her own poor little bosom panting, throbbing, against the unresponsive background of the night.

Her footsteps too became inaudible as she got upon the turf and approached close to Allonby. All was silent there also; there seemed no sound at all as if any one was stirring, but only a dead house with faint spectral lights in the windows.

She stopped and took breath and came to herself, a little calmed by the neighbourhood of a human habitation in which there must be some inhabitants though she could not hear them. She came to herself more or less, and the pulsations of terror in her ears beat less overwhelmingly, so that she began to be able to think again, and ask herself what she should do. To go to the great door, to wake all the echoes by knocking, to be met by an unconcerned servant and ushered in as if she were an ordinary visitor, all agitated and worn by emotion as she was, was impossible.

It seemed more natural, everything being out of rule, to steal round the house till she found the window of the room in which the girls were sitting, and make her little summons to them without those impossible formalities, and be admitted so to their sole company. The lawn came close up under the windows, and Effie crept round one side of the house, finding all dark, with a feeling of discouragement as if she had been repulsed. One large and broad window a little in advance showed, however, against the darkness, and though she knew this could not be a sitting-room, she stole on unconscious of any curiosity or possibility of indiscretion, it being a matter of mere existence to find some one.

The curtains were drawn half over the window, yet not so much but that she could see in. And the sight that met the girl’s astonished eyes was one so strange and incomprehensible that it affected her like a vision.

Mrs. Dirom was sitting in the middle of the room in a deep easy chair, with her head in her hands, to all appearance weeping bitterly, while a man muffled in a rough loose coat stood with his back to her, opening what seemed the door of a little cupboard in the wall close to the bed. Effie gazed terror-stricken, wondering was it a robber, who was it? Mrs. Dirom was making no resistance; she was only crying, her face buried in her hands.

The little door yielded at last, and showed to Effie dimly the shelves of a safe crowded with dark indistinct objects. Then Mrs. Dirom rose up, and taking some of these indistinct objects in her hands suddenly made visible a blaze of diamonds which she seemed to press upon the man.

He turned round to the light, as Effie, stooping, half kneeling on the wet grass, gazed in, in a kind of trance, scarcely knowing what she did. The coat in which he was muffled was large and rough, and a big muffler hung loosely round his neck, but to the great astonishment of the young spectator the face was that of Mr. Dirom himself. He seemed to laugh and put away the case in which the diamonds were blazing.

Then out of the further depths of the safe he brought a bundle of papers over which he nodded his head a great many times as if with satisfaction. At this moment something seemed to disturb them, some sound apparently in the house, for they both looked towards the door, and then the lamp was suddenly extinguished and Effie saw no more. It was a curious scene—the diamonds lighting up the dim room, the woman in tears offering them to the man, he refusing, holding his little bundle of papers, the unusual dress, the air of excitement and emotion: and then sudden darkness, nothing visible any more; yet the certainty that these two people were there, without light, concealing themselves and their proceedings, whatever these might be.

Effie had looked on scarcely knowing why, unaware that she was prying into other people’s concerns, suddenly attracted by the gleam of light, by the comfort of feeling some one near. The putting out of the lamp threw her back into her panic, yet changed it. She shrank away from the window with a sudden fear of the house in which something strange, she knew not what, was going on. Her mind was too much confused to ask what it was, to make any representation to herself of what she had seen; but the thought of these two people in the dark seemed to give a climax to all the nameless terrors of the night.