The chair she sat in was comfortable, spacious, soft. There was little danger of her falling asleep. In her present state of excitement and anxiety sleep would keep off. But even if she should happen to doze, there was small risk. Nothing could be more unlikely than that she should slip out of that capacious chair and attract attention by the noise of her fall to the floor.
She sat herself further back in the chair to avoid the possibility of such an accident. She had remarked during the day, that sound passed easily and fully through the building, owing, no doubt, to the absence of furniture from many of the rooms and the intense stillness surrounding the house.
Until now, she had not noticed the utter silence of the place. All day long she had been too much agitated to perceive it. She was accustomed to the bustle and hum of Great London, which, even in its quietest streets, day and night, never suffers solution of the continuity of sound, artificial sound, sound the product of man. In that deepest hush, that awful calm that falls upon London between one and three in the morning, there may be moments when distinct, individualized sound is wanting, but there is always a faint dull hum, the murmur of the breathing of mute millions of men.
Here, in this room, was not complete silence, for abroad the rain still fell upon the grass and trees with a murmur like the secret speeding of a smooth fast river through the night.
She sat with her back to the partition between her and the dining-room. She had not dared to move the heavy chair for fear of making noise. The chair stood with its back to the partition. It was midway between the outer wall of the house and the partition of the inner hall. On her left, four yards from where she sat, rose a pale blue luminous space, the open window through which she had entered. On her right, at an equal distance, was the invisible door which she had locked upon retiring hours ago. The large, old-fashioned mahogany four-posted bedstead stood in the middle of the room, between the door and the window. The outline of the bedstead facing the window was dimly discernible in mass. No detail of it could be made out. Something stood there, it was impossible to say what. All the rest of the furniture was lost, swallowed up in gloom, annihilated by the dark.
The room was large and lofty. It was wainscotted as high as a man could reach. Above the wainscot the wall was painted dark green. A heavy cornice ran round the angles of the walls. From door to window was twenty feet. From the partition against which she sat to the wall opposite her was twenty-four feet. The curtains of the bedstead were gathered back at the head and foot posts.
Of all this, beyond the parts of the bedstead fronting the window, Edith could see nothing now. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her arms close to her side, her head resting on the back of the chair. She closed her eyes, not from drowsiness, but to shut out as much as possible the memory of the place, the thoughts of her situation. She told herself she was once more back in her unpretending little room in Grimsby Street. She tried to make herself believe the beating of the rain on the trees and glass of the conservatory and gravelled carriage sweep in front of the house was the dull murmur of London heard through some new medium. She should hear her grandmother's voice soon.
"Have you done, Oscar?"
"Yes, mother. I have finished for the night."
Edith Grace sat up in her chair and gasped with terror. The words seemed spoken at her ear. The voices were those of Oscar Leigh, the hunchback dwarf, and his mother, Mrs. Leigh, the paralysed old woman! Whence came those voices? What was she about to hear?