Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (469 page)

The east passage, after leading them on for a few yards only, terminated in a vestibule, with a high door in it which faced them as they advanced. The door admitted them to a large and lofty drawing-room, decorated, like all the other apartments, with valuable old-fashioned furniture. Leading the way across this room, Magdalen’s conductor pushed back a heavy sliding-door, opposite the door of entrance. “Put your apron over your head,” said old Mazey. “We are coming to the Banqueting-Hall now. The floor’s mortal cold, and the damp sticks to the place like cockroaches to a collier. His honour the admiral calls it the Arctic Passage. I’ve got my name for it, too — I call it, Freeze-your-Bones.”

Magdalen passed through the doorway, and found herself in the ancient Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux.

On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in embrasures, and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred feet in length. On her right hand, ranged in one long row from end to end of the opposite wall, hung a dismal collection of black, begrimed old pictures, rotting from their frames, and representing battle-scenes by sea and land. Below the pictures, midway down the length of the wall, yawned a huge cavern of a fireplace, surmounted by a towering mantel-piece of black marble. The one object of furniture (if furniture it might be called) visible far or near in the vast emptiness of the place, was a gaunt ancient tripod of curiously chased metal, standing lonely in the middle of the hall, and supporting a wide circular pan, filled deep with ashes from an extinct charcoal fire. The high ceiling, once finely carved and gilt, was foul with dirt and cobwebs; the naked walls at either end of the room were stained with damp; and the cold of the marble floor struck through the narrow strip of matting laid down, parallel with the windows, as a foot-path for passengers across the wilderness of the room. No better name for it could have been devised than the name which old Mazey had found. “Freeze-your-Bones” accurately described, in three words, the Banqueting-Hall at St. Crux.

“Do you never light a fire in this dismal place?” asked Magdalen.

“It all depends on which side of Freeze-your-Bones his honour the admiral lives,” said old Mazey. “His honour likes to shift his quarters, sometimes to one side of the house, sometimes to the other. If he lives Noathe of Freeze-your-Bones — which is where you’ve just come from — we don’t waste our coals here. If he lives South of Freeze-your-Bones — which is where we are going to next — we light the fire in the grate and the charcoal in the pan. Every night, when we do that, the damp gets the better of us: every morning, we turn to again, and get the better of the damp.”

With this remarkable explanation, old Mazey led the way to the lower end of the Hall, opened more doors, and showed Magdalen through another suite of rooms, four in number, all of moderate size, and all furnished in much the same manner as the rooms in the northern wing. She looked out of the windows, and saw the neglected gardens of St. Crux, overgrown with brambles and weeds. Here and there, at no great distance in the grounds, the smoothly curving line of one of the tidal streams peculiar to the locality wound its way, gleaming in the sunlight, through gaps in the brambles and trees. The more distant view ranged over the flat eastward country beyond, speckled with its scattered little villages; crossed and recrossed by its network of “back-waters”; and terminated abruptly by the long straight line of sea-wall which protects the defenseless coast of Essex from invasion by the sea.

“Have we more rooms still to see?” asked Magdalen, turning from the view of the garden, and looking about her for another door.

“No more, my dear — we’ve run aground here, and we may as well wear round and put back again,” said old Mazey. “There’s another side of the house — due south of you as you stand now — which is all tumbling about our ears. You must go out into the garden if you want to see it; it’s built off from us by a brick bulkhead, t’other side of this wall here. The monks lived due south of us, my dear, hundreds of years afore his honour the admiral was born or thought of, and a fine time of it they had, as I’ve heard. They sang in the church all the morning, and drank grog in the orchard all the afternoon. They slept off their grog on the best of feather-beds, and they fattened on the neighbourhood all the year round. Lucky beggars! lucky beggars!”

Apostrophizing the monks in these terms, and evidently regretting that he had not lived himself in those good old times, the veteran led the way back through the rooms. On the return passage across “Freeze-your-Bones,” Magdalen preceded him. “She’s as straight as a poplar,” mumbled old Mazey to himself, hobbling along after his youthful companion, and wagging his venerable head in cordial approval. “I never was particular what nation they belonged to; but I always
did
like ‘em straight and fine grown, and I always
shall
like ‘em straight and fine grown, to my dying day.”

“Are there more rooms to see upstairs, on the second floor?” asked Magdalen, when they had returned to the point from which they had started.

The naturally clear, distinct tones of her voice had hitherto reached the old sailor’s imperfect sense of hearing easily enough. Rather to her surprise, he became stone deaf on a sudden, to her last question.

“Are you sure of your Pints of the Compass?” he inquired. “If you’re not sure, put your back ag’in the wall, and we’ll go all over ‘em again, my dear, beginning with the Noathe.”

Magdalen assured him that she felt quite familiar, by this time, with all the points, the “Noathe” included; and then repeated her question in louder tones. The veteran obstinately matched her by becoming deafer than ever.

“Yes, my dear,” he said, “you’re right; it
is
chilly in these passages; and unless I go back to my fire, my fire’ll go out — won’t it? If you don’t feel sure of your Pints of the Compass, come in to me and I’ll put you right again.” He winked benevolently, whistled to the dogs, and hobbled off. Magdalen heard him chuckle over his own success in balking her curiosity on the subject of the second floor. “I know how to deal with ‘em!” said old Mazey to himself, in high triumph. “Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives —
I
know how to deal with ‘em!”

Left by herself, Magdalen exemplified the excellence of the old sailor’s method of treatment, in her particular case, by ascending the stairs immediately, to make her own observations on the second floor. The stone passage here was exactly similar, except that more doors opened out of it, to the passage on the first floor. She opened the two nearest doors, one after another, at a venture, and discovered that both rooms were bed-chambers. The fear of being discovered by one of the woman-servants in a part of the house with which she had no concern, warned her not to push her investigations on the bedroom floor too far at starting. She hurriedly walked down the passage to see where it ended, discovered that it came to its termination in a lumber-room, answering to the position of the vestibule downstairs, and retraced her steps immediately.

On her way back she noticed an object which had previously escaped her attention. It was a low truckle-bed, placed parallel with the wall, and close to one of the doors on the bedroom side. In spite of its strange and comfortless situation, the bed was apparently occupied at night by a sleeper; the sheets were on it, and the end of a thick red fisherman’s cap peeped out from under the pillow. She ventured on opening the door near which the bed was placed, and found herself, as she conjectured from certain signs and tokens, in the admiral’s sleeping chamber. A moment’s observation of the room was all she dared risk, and, softly closing the door again, she returned to the kitchen regions.

The truckle-bed, and the strange position in which it was placed, dwelt on her mind all through the afternoon. Who could possibly sleep in it? The remembrance of the red fisherman’s cap, and the knowledge she had already gained of Mazey’s dog-like fidelity to his master, helped her to guess that the old sailor might be the occupant of the truckle-bed. But why, with bedrooms enough and to spare, should he occupy that cold and comfortless situation at night? Why should he sleep on guard outside his master’s door? Was there some nocturnal danger in the house of which the admiral was afraid? The question seemed absurd, and yet the position of the bed forced it irresistibly on her mind.

Stimulated by her own ungovernable curiosity on this subject, Magdalen ventured to question the housekeeper. She acknowledged having walked from end to end of the passage on the second floor, to see if it was as long as the passage on the first; and she mentioned having noticed with astonishment the position of the truckle-bed. Mrs. Drake answered her implied inquiry shortly and sharply. “I don’t blame a young girl like you,” said the old lady, “for being a little curious when she first comes into such a strange house as this. But remember, for the future, that yo ur business does not lie on the bedroom story. Mr. Mazey sleeps on that bed you noticed. It is his habit at night to sleep outside his master’s door.” With that meager explanation Mrs. Drake’s lips closed, and opened no more.

Later in the day Magdalen found an opportunity of applying to old Mazey himself. She discovered the veteran in high good humor, smoking his pipe, and warming a tin mug of ale at his own snug fire.

“Mr. Mazey,” she asked, boldly, “why do you put your bed in that cold passage?”

“What! you have been upstairs, you young jade, have you?” said old Mazey, looking up from his mug with a leer.

Magdalen smiled and nodded. “Come! come! tell me,” she said, coaxingly. “Why do you sleep outside the admiral’s door?”

“Why do you part your hair in the middle, my dear?” asked old Mazey, with another leer.

“I suppose, because I am accustomed to do it,” answered Magdalen.

“Ay! ay!” said the veteran. “That’s why, is it? Well, my dear, the reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep outside the admiral’s door. I know how to deal with ‘em!” chuckled old Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph. “Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives —
I
know how to deal with ‘em!”

Magdalen’s third and last attempt at solving the mystery of the truckle-bed was made while she was waiting on the admiral at dinner. The old gentleman’s questions gave her an opportunity of referring to the subject, without any appearance of presumption or disrespect; but he proved to be quite as impenetrable, in his way, as old Mazey and Mrs. Drake had been in theirs. “It doesn’t concern you, my dear,” said the admiral, bluntly. “Don’t be curious. Look in your Old Testament when you go downstairs, and see what happened in the Garden of Eden through curiosity. Be a good girl, and don’t imitate your mother Eve.”

Late at night, as Magdalen passed the end of the second-floor passage, proceeding alone on her way up to her own room, she stopped and listened. A screen was placed at the entrance of the corridor, so as to hide it from the view of persons passing on the stairs. The snoring she heard on the other side of the screen encouraged her to slip round it, and to advance a few steps. Shading the light of her candle with her hand, she ventured close to the admiral’s door, and saw, to her surprise, that the bed had been moved since she had seen it in the day-time, so as to stand exactly across the door, and to bar the way entirely to any one who might attempt to enter the admiral’s room. After this discovery, old Mazey himself, snoring lustily, with the red fisherman’s cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and the blankets drawn up to his nose, became an object of secondary importance only, by comparison with his bed. That the veteran did actually sleep on guard before his master’s door, and that he and the admiral and the housekeeper were in the secret of this unaccountable proceeding, was now beyond all doubt.

“A strange end,” thought Magdalen, pondering over her discovery as she stole upstairs to her own sleeping-room — ”a strange end to a strange day!”

CHAPTER II.

THE first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen was, to all appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret Trust than on the day when she first entered on her service at St. Crux.

But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight lost. Experience had already satisfied her on one important point — experience had shown that she could set the rooted distrust of the other servants safely at defiance. Time had accustomed the women to her presence in the house, without shaking the vague conviction which possessed them all alike, that the newcomer was not one of themselves. All that Magdalen could do in her own defense was to keep the instinctive female suspicion of her confined within those purely negative limits which it had occupied from the first, and this she accomplished.

Day after day the women watched her with the untiring vigilance of malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a discovery rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and industriously — with an ever-present remembrance of herself and her place — the new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of rest and relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day with old Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night during which she was secure from observation in the solitude of her room. Thanks to the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each one of the servants had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a room of her own. Alone in the night, Magdalen might dare to be herself again — might dream of the past, and wake from the dream, encountering no curious eyes to notice that she was in tears — might ponder over the future, and be roused by no whisperings in corners, which tainted her with the suspicion of “having something on her mind.”