“I don’t know,” said Helen, ready to weep with the strange and wild confusion, the sense of misery and wretchedness which was involved to her in this overthrowal of all habits, this sudden secrecy and adventure in the dark. But little Janey clapped her hands. It was a delightful novelty to the child. She pulled on her stockings on her own small pink feet, her eyes dancing with pleasure and excitement. No need to carry her down asleep, as Helen with terror and doubt of her own powers had feared.
“You must be quiet; you must be quiet—not to let the servants know,” the elder sister whispered.
“I am doing to be quiet,” said the little girl, delighted with the mystery. She thrust her big doll into her bed, and covered it carefully, while Helen, not knowing what she did, picked up various fugitive articles, half-consciously, and put them into the pockets of the ulster which she had put on.
“Be dood, baby, and keep my little bed warm till I come back,” sang little Janey.
“Oh, hush, hush! you are to be quiet—you are to be quiet,” Helen said.
They crept down the great stairs like two ghosts, fantastic little shadows, so unlike anything that could have been expected on that grand staircase at that hour. But they met no one. The sounds from the servants’ hall were a little more audible as the evening went on. The master was absent, the master’s daughter too shy and timid, even had she heard them, to take any notice. The hours of licence were approaching when even Mr Brownlow relaxed the bonds of discipline. As these sounds reached them, little Janey clasped her sister’s hand tighter. But it was the sense of a mischievous escapade, not of a mysterious calamity, which was in her mind.
“What will Nursey say?” the child said with a low laugh.
Even the whisper frightened Helen. The lights flared in all those vacant passages, but gloom lurked in every corner; the great rooms were all dark and empty: not a living being, not a sound of habitation was in the magnificent costly place, except the squeak of the footman’s violin, the far-off laughter of the servants—so much for so little! Amid all the confusion and terror of the moment, Helen always recollected the vacant lighted staircase, the hall with its marble pillars, the vast darkness of the dining-room standing open—not a creature near, except those two helpless creatures equipped for flight; but on the other hand, the servants’ merry-making, and the squeak of the fiddle painfully scratching out a popular tune. They paused to listen for one moment, holding their breath. Then they went into the drawing-room, where Helen’s lamp was still burning close to the wall, making the darkness visible. Her book was still lying open on the table. She had left the heroine at a painful crisis, but it was not so terrible as this.
Helen closed the door behind her with great precautions, and Janey, a little frightened at the dark, clung to her closely.
“Where is papa? I don’t see papa,” cried the child.