Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (228 page)

The letter was dispatched by that day’s post. In the remote position of Porthgenna, and in the unfinished state of the railroad at that time, two days would elapse before an answer from London could be reasonably hoped for. Feeling that it would be better for Rosamond if this period of suspense was passed out of the house, Mr. Frankland proposed to fill up the time by a little excursion along the coast to some places famous for their scenery, which would be likely to interest his wife, and which she might occupy herself pleasantly in describing on the spot for the benefit of her husband. This suggestion was immediately acted on. The young couple left Porthgenna, and only returned on the evening of the second day.

On the morning of the third day the longed-for letter from the vicar’s man of business lay on the table when Leonard and Rosamond entered the breakfast-room. Shrowl had decided to accept Mr. Frankland’s condition — first, because he held that any man must be out of his senses who refused a five-pound note when it was offered to him; secondly, because he believed that his master was too absolutely dependent on him to turn him away for any cause whatever; thirdly, because, if Mr. Treverton did part with him, he was not sufficiently attached to his place to care at all about losing it. Accordingly the bargain had been struck in five minutes — and there was the copy of the Plan, inclosed with the letter of explanation to attest the fact!

Rosamond spread the all-important document out on the table with trembling hands, looked it over eagerly for a few moments, and laid her finger on the square that represented the position of the Myrtle Room.

“Here it is!” she cried. “ Oh, Lenny, how my heart beats! One, two, three, four — the fourth door on the first-floor landing is the door of the Myrtle Room!”

She would have called at once for the keys of the north rooms; but her husband insisted on her waiting until she had composed herself a little, and until she had taken some breakfast. In spite of all he could say, the meal was hurried over so rapidly that in ten minutes more his wife’s arm was in his, and she was leading him to the staircase.

The gardener’s prognostication about the weather had been verified: it had turned to heat — heavy, misty, vaporous, dull heat. One white quivering fog-cloud spread thinly over all the heaven, rolled down seaward on the horizon line, and dulled the sharp edges of the distant moorland view. The sunlight shone pale and trembling; the lightest, highest leaves of flowers at open windows were still; the domestic animals lay about sleepily in dark corners. Chance household noises sounded heavy and loud in the languid, airless stillness which the heat seemed to hold over the earth. Down in the servants’ hall, the usual bustle of morning work was suspended. When Rosamond looked in, on her way to the housekeeper’s room to get the keys, the women were fanning themselves, and the men were sitting with their coats off. They were all talking peevishly about the heat, and all agreeing that such a day as that, in the month of June, they had never known and never heard of before.

Rosamond took the keys, declined the housekeeper’s offer to accompany her, and leading her husband along the passages, unlocked the door of the north hall.

“How unnaturally cool it is here!” she said, as they entered the deserted place.

At the foot of the stairs she stopped, and took a firmer hold of her husband’s arm.

“Is anything the matter?” asked Leonard. “Is the change to the damp coolness of this place affecting you in anyway?”

“No, no,” she answered hastily. “I am far too excited to feel either heat or damp, as I might feel them at other times. But, Lenny, supposing your guess about Mrs. Jazeph is right? — ”

“Yes?”

“And, supposing we discover the secret of the Myrtle Room, might it not turn out to be something concerning my father or my mother which we ought not to know? I thought of that when Mrs. Pentreath offered to accompany us, and it determined me to come here alone with you.”

“It is just as likely that the Secret might be something we ought to know,” replied Mr. Frankland, after a moment’s thought. “In any case, my idea about Mrs. Jazeph is, after all, only a guess in the dark. However, Rosamond, if you feel any hesitation — ”

“No! come what may of it, Lenny, we can’t go back now. Give me your hand again. We have traced the mystery thus far together, and together we will find it out.”

She ascended the staircase, leading him after her, as she spoke. On the landing she looked again at the Plan, and satisfied herself that the first impression she had derived from it, of the position of the Myrtle Room, was correct. She counted the doors on to the fourth, and looked out from the bunch the key numbered “IV.,” and put it in the lock.

Before she turned it she paused, and looked round at her husband.

He was standing by her side, with his patient face turned expectantly toward the door. She put her right hand on the key, turned it slowly in the lock, drew him closer to her with her left hand, and paused again.

“I don’t know what has come to me,” she whispered faintly. “I feel as if I was afraid to push open the door.”

“Your hand is cold, Rosamond. Wait a little — lock the door again — put it off till another day.”

He felt his wife’s fingers close tighter and tighter on his hand while he said those words. Then there was an instant — one memorable, breathless instant, never to be forgotten afterward — of utter silence. Then he heard the sharp, cracking sound of the opening door, and felt himself drawn forward suddenly into a changed atmosphere, and knew that Rosamond and he were in the Myrtle Room.

CHAPTER V.

THE MYRTLE ROOM.

A BROAD
, square window, with small frames and dark sashes; dreary yellow light, glimmering through the dirt of half a century crusted on the glass; purer rays striking across the dimness through the fissures of the broken panes; dust floating upward, pouring downward, rolling smoothly round and round in the still atmospheric; lofty, bare, faded red walls; chairs in confusion, tables placed awry; a tall black bookcase, with an open door half dropping from its hinges; a pedestal, with a broken bust lying in fragments at its feet; a ceiling darkened by stains, a floor whitened by dust — such was the aspect of the Myrtle Room when Rosamond first entered it, leading her husband by the hand.

After passing the doorway, she slowly advanced a few steps, and then stopped, waiting with every sense on the watch, with every faculty strung up to the highest pitch of expectation — waiting in the ominous stillness, in the forlorn solitude, for the vague Something which the room might contain, which might rise visibly before her, which might sound audibly behind her, which might touch her on a sudden from above, from below, from either side. A minute or more she breathlessly waited; and nothing appeared, nothing sounded, nothing touched her. The silence and the solitude had their secret to keep, and kept it.

She looked round at her husband. His face, so quiet and composed at other times, expressed doubt and uneasiness now. His disengaged hand was outstretched, and moving backward and forward and up and down, in the vain attempt to touch something which might enable him to guess at the position in which he was placed. His look and action, as he stood in that new and strange sphere, the mute appeal which he made so sadly and so unconsciously to his wife’s loving help, restored Rosamond’s self-possession by recalling her heart to the dearest of all its interests, to the holiest of all its cares. Her eyes, fixed so distrustfully but the moment before on the dreary spectacle of neglect and ruin which spread around them, turned fondly to her husband’s face, radiant with the unfathomable brightness of pity and love. She bent quickly across him, caught his outstretched arm, and pressed it to his side.

“Don’t do that, darling,” she said, gently; “I don’t like to see it. It looks as if you had forgotten that I was with you — as if you were left alone and helpless. What need have you of your sense of touch, when you have got me? Did you hear me open the door, Lenny? Do you know that we are the Myrtle Room?”

“What did you see, Rosamond, when you opened the door? What do you see now?” he asked those questions rapidly and eagerly, in a whisper.

“Nothing but dust and dirt and desolation. The loneliest moor in Cornwall is not so lonely looking as this room; but there is nothing to alarm us, nothing (except one’s own fancy) that suggests an idea of danger of any kind.”

“What made you so long before you spoke to me, Rosamond?”

“I was frightened, love, on first entering the door — not at what I saw, but at my own fanciful ideas of what I might see. I was child enough to be afraid of something starting out of the walls, or of something rising through the floor; in short, of I hardly know what. I have got over those fears, Lenny, but a certain distrust of the room still clings to me. Do you feel it?”

“I feel something like it,” he replied, uneasily. “I feel as if the night that is always before my eyes was darker to me in this place than in any other. Where are we standing now?”

“Just inside the door.”

“Does the floor look safe to walk on?” He tried it suspiciously with his foot as he put the question.

“Quite safe,” replied Rosamond. “It would never support the furniture that is on it if it was so rotten as to be dangerous. Come across the room with me, and try it.” With these words she led him slowly to the window.

“The air seems as if it was nearer to me,” he said, bending his face forward toward the lowest of the broken panes. “What is before us now?”

She told him, describing minutely the size and appearance of the window. He turned from it carelessly, as if that part of the room had no interest for him. Rosamond still lingered near the window, to try if she could feel a breath of the outer atmosphere. There was a momentary silence, which was broken by her husband.

“What are you doing now?” he asked anxiously.

“I am looking out at one of the broken panes of glass, and trying to get some air,” answered Rosamond. “The shadow of the house is below me, resting on the lonely garden; but there is no coolness breathing up from it. I see the tall weeds rising straight and still, and the tangled wild-flowers interlacing themselves heavily. There is a tree near me, and the leaves look as if they were all struck motionless. Away to the left, there is a peep of white sea and tawny sand quivering in the yellow heat. There are no clouds; there is no blue sky. The mist quenches the brightness of the sunlight, and lets nothing but the fire of it through. There is something threatening in the sky, and the earth seems to know it!”

“But the room! the room!” said Leonard, drawing her aside from the window. “Never mind the view; tell me what the room is like — exactly what it is like. I shall not feel easy about you, Rosamond, if you don’t describe everything to me just as it is.”

“My darling! You know you can depend on my describing everything. I am only doubting where to begin, and how to make sure of seeing for you what you are likely to think most worth looking at. Here is an old ottoman against the wall — the wall where the window is. I will take off my apron and dust the seat for you; and then you can sit down and listen comfortably while I tell you, before we think of anything else, what the room is like, to begin with. First of all, I suppose, I must make you understand how large it is?”

“Yes, that is the first thing. Try if you can compare it with any room that I was familiar with before I lost my sight.”