“I thought it was you who objected to going away,” he said peevishly.
Helen sat down again before her little lamp at the table. This time she had some darning to do. She sat and listened for every step, for every breath. Oh, to go away, to go away! she said to herself. To go where? She could not tell. Was there safety anywhere? Was there any spot on earth where this sickening, shameful danger, this concealment would not come again? Was it not out of the world, away from life and its torments altogether, where alone they could be safe? After a while Mr Goulburn came back. He was nervous too, and shaken by the alarm that seemed in the air.
“I don’t seem happy in the village to-night,” he said, “though it is all as quiet as usual. I think that big bully must use up all the air for his own breathing, I can’t get any.” He opened the persiennes as he spoke, then drew them close again. “I think I shall go into the garden, Helen. I must get breath somewhere. I have shut the front door. Go to bed. I shall go and sit in the summer-house to get my breath.”
“Will you take some of the Comtesse’s drops, papa? She said they were so good.”
“Ether,” he said—“simple ether; it smells too strong. What do I want with your old wife’s medicines? No; I’ll go and sit out in the garden and get my breath. Poor child, you are tired, and it is no wonder. But all is safe now for the night, Helen; go to bed.”
All was safe for the night. The dreadful day was over with all its terrors—everything was still. The village had gone to sleep all the earlier that it had been so late on the night before. Helen felt too much alarmed to open the door again to look out for Charley Ashton. She took her father’s advice passively, and went to her room, where Janey was sleeping peacefully. Something, she could not tell what, kept her from undressing. She lay down upon her bed to wait till her father should come in from the garden. He might want something before he went finally to rest. But Helen was worn out with the long trial of the day, and lying across her bed fully dressed, she dropped to sleep.
All was safe for the night—so some one else thought who was standing under the shadow of Père Goudron’s wall. The moon was veiled and dim, but yet was shining and casting a shadow more dark than the ordinary darkness of the night. It was not possible to see what it was at the corner under the window, but something moved; it was as if a part of the darkness detached itself slowly from the rest; where all was black, a something blacker than the air, yet separate from the wall, rising upward. It moved noiselessly across the front of the house. All was quiet, so still that a breath might have been heard, but nothing was audible. A faint glimmer showed where Mr Goulburn in his impatience had opened the persiennes. He had drawn them close again, but he had not fastened them. He had a contempt for bolts and bars in this quiet place. They were open, and the window was open, showing a little glimmer of light. But in the darkness even that far-away glimmer showed. The moving thing below put up a hand and cautiously, softly opened the unfastened persiennes, then climbed up noiselessly, a long, dark, undistinguishable figure, into the room, drawing the shutters close behind. Was all safe? There was a pause, and the empty room became full of a living presence, a breath, a danger. Beyond the folding-doors, which were closed, Helen slept profoundly the sleep of utter weariness. Across the passage the faint little ray of the veilleuse shone steadily through the half-opened door. The question was—Did any one lie there, sleeping or waking? The intruder took what was, in the circumstances, a long time to consider. Then he advanced silently. To himself it seemed that the whole house creaked and shivered under his feet, but Helen, fast asleep, heard nothing; and if out in the garden a vague sound reached her father’s ears, he imagined it was only Helen moving about her bedroom, where her light was still burning. That watching light seemed to make all safe, and the little veilleuse, on the other hand, guarded the empty chamber. The thief trembled before it. He paused and wiped his forehead, not daring to confront it. But he had gone too far now not to go on. The man’s heart, which was beating wildly with excitement, gave a great jump when, peeping in, he saw the room vacant, the bed unoccupied. He went in and closed the door.
All were sleeping quietly in the house, except Père Goudron, who lay quiet enough, but not asleep, thinking of the folly of l’Anglais, who had given away so much money for the sake of a young man who was nothing to him, and wondering in what way he could manage to secure some of those same superabundant riches for himself. He could not himself violently have robbed l’Anglais, or any one else. But he, too, had seen the book with the French notes, and he longed for a share of them. He was turning over in his mind what fable he could invent, what tale of poverty he could tell, to beguile some more of those notes out of the rich man’s pocket. He heard the creak, the startling sound of movement, but thought nothing of it. His lodgers did not keep the regular hours he did; they were like all the English, early one night, late another, never to be relied upon. But he lay still and pondered, intent upon inventing some story by which he, too, might get a share of the spoil.
Mr Goulburn, for his part, sat on the bench in the garden, and tried, as he had said, to get his breath. It had never been so bad before. His heart laboured, thumping like a steam-engine, creaking and struggling as if the machinery was all rusty and out of gear. What was the meaning of it? There had never been anything the matter with his heart till that old witch at the château decided that he had heart disease. She was not an old witch; but that is how men of middle age describe their female contemporaries who have displeased them. The moon was high in the sky, but veiled and watery, giving a sort of milky whiteness to the atmosphere rather than light. Under this faint pale glimmer he sat with a small acacia waving its long leaflets over him. It must be a sultry night—certainly there was no air to breathe; he could not get any. Harvey with his big English lungs must have exhausted it, he thought, with a faint joke in his mind in the midst of his bodily distress. No air to breathe. He bethought himself by-and-by of the Comtesse’s drops, which, after all, might do some good. At first he thought he would call Helen to get them for him. Then a pitying recollection of her wan face crossed his mind. He would not disturb her, poor child; he would go himself. He rose and came in slowly, his labouring heart sounding in the stillness, his very limbs feeble with its excited action.
A moment more and the quiet of the sleeping house was broken by a hideous commotion. There was a sound of a door pushed open, a loud exclamation, a momentary conflict of voices, the door dashed back against the wall. Then a wild, long cry, a dull thud upon the floor. By that time Père Goudron had got out of his bed, and was calling upon Blanchette and Ursule, and scrambling for a light, and Helen waking in wild terror out of her sleep, had sprung up and seized her candle. She was so transported with anxiety and terror that the voices that followed conveyed no information to her ear; but M. Goudron heard the persiennes dashed open, and a muffled leap into the street. Next moment Helen’s cries resounded through the house and rang out into the night.