The Grim House

Chapter Seven.
The Locked Door

The summons from Mr Percy reached the Manor-house the very morning after the escapade which I described in the last chapter, so Moore was still rather on cold terms with me when the departure of our hosts was announced.

Afterwards, though it had scarcely struck me at the time, I remembered that he had been rather silent when he heard of it, expressing but very little regret in the prospect of their absence. I recollect Isabel’s turning to him and saying —

“You don’t seem to mind it much, Moore; I feel rather hurt;” whereupon he grew red and said something rather confusedly about its only being for a few days; that we would manage to amuse ourselves all right, or words to that effect. But in the little bustle that ensued, the boy’s peculiar manner, as I have said, made no great impression on me.

Isabel and her father started, I think, the next day. I remember standing in the porch with Moore to watch them off, and as soon as the carriage had disappeared down the drive, I turned to him with some little remark as to how odd it was for him and me to find ourselves alone for the first time in our lives, and that not at our own home.

“You must be your very nicest to me, Othello, do you hear, to prevent my feeling dull,” I said, meaning to propitiate him after my sharpness on the evening of our last expedition, for I saw that the cloud had not yet disappeared.

“I shall be quite ready to do anything you like,” he said, rather primly, “and yes, I think I can promise you that it will not be my fault if you have a dull time.”

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed, with a passing flash of misgiving; but he evaded a direct reply, though I fancied I heard him murmuring something practically inaudible.

“The best thing I can do,” I thought to myself, “is to put some other things in his head, if he is still planning any fresh investigations; and after all, I have his promise to do nothing without telling me.” It did not then occur to me that the vague threat he had thrown out as to not letting the matter drop could be twisted by his boyish conscience into a definite announcement of his project.

I went on talking about the drive that had been proposed for us that afternoon in Isabel’s pony-cart – a drive in a new direction, as to which Mr Wynyard had instructed us before he left. Moore answered with interest, even getting up a little argument as to the exact route we were to take. But still he was not quite himself, nor did he become so during our expedition, though it passed off very successfully, without our losing our way or any other misfortune.

And during the evening that followed something in his manner continued to give me the same feeling of slight uneasiness. He did not seem to care to talk much, and looked himself out a book from among those in the library which Mr Wynyard had recommended to him, and then settled himself in a corner to enjoy it. I felt a little hurt and anxious too, though I hoped it only meant that his irritation with me had not entirely subsided.

“I wish I had never told him a word about that hateful old house or the stupid people that live in it. I dare say there is no mystery at all, and that they are just a parcel of half imbecile hypochondriacs,” I thought to myself, feeling as if I must give vent, at least in thought, to my vexation towards somebody! And aloud I appealed to Moore – not captiously, as that would only have made things worse – but with a touch of reproach.

“I think you might talk to me a little, or play chess, or something sociable,” I said brightly. “You might even read aloud. It is rather dull for me.”

“I can’t read aloud; you know I can’t,” he replied quietly enough. “I’ll play chess if you like.”

And so we did. But Moore did not put his usual spirit into it, and so when I checkmated him at the end of an hour or so, I did not feel as pleased as would have been the case in an ordinary way. For he played better than I. And soon after I said I felt tired, as I did, and got up to go to bed.

“How long are they,” – meaning of course our hosts – “going to stay away?” Moore said abruptly as we were bidding each other good-night.

“Three days – four at the most,” I replied. “This is Tuesday. Yes, they quite hope to be back on Friday.”

He murmured something unintelligible in reply, but I said no more. I was really tired, for our drive had been a long one, and over very rough roads for some considerable part of the day.

The next morning, however, I awoke quite refreshed again, and ready for another expedition of any kind.

“I must amuse Moore if he won’t amuse me,” I thought to myself. “Boys are terrible creatures for getting into mischief if they are idle, as the old hymn truly says,” and I prepared to go downstairs to breakfast in excellent spirits.

But alas! the sunshine which had passed into my room while I was dressing had been but short-lived. Before we had finished breakfast the skies had clouded over into a very unpromising grey; long before noon it was hopeless.

“No chance of an expedition to-day!” I said, rather drearily, as I stood at the window gazing out, but Moore seemed inclined to take things philosophically.

“I’m afraid not,” he said, as he joined me, his hands in his pockets, a somewhat superior air about him. “Not for you at least, Reggie. It may clear up by late afternoon, enough for me to get out a bit, but the roads will be terrible, it’s coming down so heavily.”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t go out as well as you if it clears at all,” I said. “You forget that I am less sensitive to cold than you, since you were ill!”

If I had thought a moment I would not have said this, knowing what boy nature is as to any precautionary measures for health. I was surprised that my not very tactful speech did not seem to annoy my brother.

“I don’t know about that,” was all he said in reply. “I’m ever so much tougher than I was, and at worst, I have the advantage over you of having no flapping skirts to soak up the wet.”

No more was said just then. We got through the day comfortably enough. I amused myself, as one can always do on a wet day when away from one’s people, by writing a long letter home; Moore entertaining himself, so far as I saw him during the morning, with a wonderful “find” in the shape of a collection of old bound volumes of Punch– dating back years before their present reader had honoured the world by his presence. I overheard him chuckling quietly to himself now and then, as he sat in his corner, and the sound was pleasant to my ears for more reasons than one. I was glad that he was not feeling bored, and I was relieved to think that the suppressed excitement which I had begun to suspect his manner had no existence except in my fancy.

“I don’t believe,” I said to myself with satisfaction, “I don’t think there can be anything brewing in his brain,” and in this comfortable state of mind I passed the greater part of the day, reassuring myself now and then by taking a peep at the boy whenever I lost sight of him for many minutes at a time.

We had tea together, of course, very comfortably in the library, which we had chosen in preference to the drawing-room during our tête-à-tête days, and Moore did full justice to the cakes which Isabel before she left home had taken care to order in profusion for his, or our, delectation.

The second post came in about five o’clock at Millflowers, and the outgoing post left at six. To-day brought an unexpected letter from mother, from whom I had already heard that very morning. This necessitated an addition to what I had previously written, as it concerned a matter of some little importance.

“I shall only just have time,” I reflected, “to answer what mother asks before the bag goes,” and for a moment or two I sat thinking over what I had to say, rather absorbed in it.

Moore meanwhile had strolled to the window, and stood there looking out; the post had brought nothing for him.

“It has cleared up,” he remarked, “to some extent at least, but it doesn’t look tempting. What do you say about going out, Reggie?”

I looked up doubtfully.

“I don’t think I can,” I replied; “by the time I have finished my letter it will be too late, and it looks misty and disagreeable enough already. I don’t think you should go out either, Moore. It is just the sort of evening to catch cold in.”

I spoke without misgiving, for my thoughts were running on my letters. Moore did not at once reply.

“I’ll see about it,” he said; “anyway I shan’t go far, and I won’t catch cold.”

“Be sure you are in by six,” I called back to him as I left the room.

And till close upon that hour my letters engrossed me, and when I had seen them safely despatched, and returned to the library, I scarcely gave a thought to anything else, till the timepiece striking the quarter past, made me begin to expect to hear Moore’s footsteps every moment. But the clock’s ticking went on to the half-hour without his coming.

“It is wrong of him,” I began to think, “to stay out like this, when he knows I am all alone, especially after what I said.” Then as my half-forgotten fears suddenly revived – “He can’t have – oh! no, surely he would not think of anything of the kind; I am too fanciful,” and I took up a book and tried to interest myself in it. But such tryings are generally of the nature of make-believe. Sometimes, indeed, any effort of the kind, like a half dose of chloroform, only seems to intensify the consciousness one would fain put aside. I grew more and more uneasy, and when once again the timepiece struck – this time the quarter to – I threw my book aside, and gave up pretending that I had no cause for misgiving. It was not raining now, and the sky, though darkening for the evening, seemed clearer. I soon made up my mind what to do, and hurried to my own room to fetch my wraps. On the way out I met one of the men-servants.

“I am afraid we may be a little late for dinner,” I said. “My brother has stayed out so long. I am going to meet him. I know the way he has gone.”

The young man, who was extremely obliging, as were all the servants of that well-managed household, offered to go off himself in search of the truant, but I shook my head.

“No, thank you,” I replied; “I shall find him easily. He was not going far.”

Yes, indeed, in my heart I did know “the way he had gone.”

“O Moore,” I said to myself, “you are very naughty. It is really too bad. How I do wish I had been guided by Jocelyn’s advice!” and feeling decidedly angry as well as frightened – the one sensation seeming to increase instead of lessening the other – I hurried on.

My destination, I need scarcely say, was the door in the wall, and all the way thither I kept straining my eyes in the vain hope of seeing the boy’s figure emerging from the gathering gloom and coming to meet me. But no – I knew my point very accurately by now, and soon relaxed my pace, knowing that the door must be near at hand. And all the way from the Manor-house I had not met one living soul.

“It is a very lonely place,” I thought, with a little shiver of nervousness. “None of the roads near home are as deserted. I don’t think I should like to live all the year round in the North.”

Then a new fear struck me. What if the door should be locked – should have been locked after Moore had entered the grounds? for that he had done so I had no manner of doubt. What if that were the explanation of his non-appearance? What could I do?

But I did not allow myself to dwell on this cruel possibility, and in another moment it was set aside. I found the door, and it was unclosed!

Half my distress seemed to vanish with this discovery, though I grew more and more angry with my brother. Once inside, I stood still to consider, but not for long.

“He is sure to have gone to the left,” I said to myself. “All his curiosity was to peep into the house again, and he could only do so through the tonnelle and the long glass house;” so I crept along in the direction I decided upon, keeping close to the wall, between it and the shrubs which bordered it, as I have described, though it was now so dusky that my extreme precaution was scarcely called for. And before long I came to the passage between trees and bushes which we had lighted upon the last time.

It was not quite so dark here, for the real entrance to the tonnelle was a fairly wide one at the side, and I could still clearly see the glazed door at the other end. I stood still, gazing before me – then taking courage I advanced a few steps, still keeping my eyes fixed on the door through which I seemed to feel by instinct that the truant would make his way out. And I was not disappointed. As I approached the conservatory pretty closely, the door moved, softly and noiselessly. I would scarcely have noticed its doing so but for the faint glimmer of light on the glass panes of its upper part. And, peering cautiously to right and left, then gazing straight before him, stood the naughty boy!

It took all my self-command to repress an exclamation, but I did so, only whispering – and in the silence, unbroken save for the drip of the still rain-laden leaves, even a whisper sounded portentously audible – “Moore, come at once. Don’t you see me?”

See me! Of course he did. His eyes as well as his ears were as sharp as a Red Indian’s – I can’t find a better comparison – and a smile, half-triumphant, half-impish, broke over his face as he looked at me. He nodded reassuringly, and I think he was just going to speak, when suddenly, in the flash of a lightning gleam, it seemed to me, his whole expression changed. The smile vanished, a look almost of terror came over his face; he made a frantic gesture to me, which I interpreted rightly enough to mean, “get out of the way; hide yourself,” and disappeared as completely as if he had not been there at all.

For half a second I stood, dazed and completely bewildered – rubbing my eyes to make sure that I had seen him, that the whole thing had not been an extraordinary optical delusion, born of my nervous anxiety, or – worse still – could it have been not Moore himself, but his ghost that I had seen? After all, what might not have happened to him in that mysterious secret house? There was something abnormal about it, or rather about the lives of its inhabitants. Why, oh why had I told the boy anything about it, I thought with momentary anguish. But another instant reassured me as to this last foolish terror. It was Moore himself – he had smiled in the mischievous way he sometimes did. How grateful I felt for that smile!

All these thoughts, as will readily be understood by those who have gone through similar crises, had flashed across my mind in far less time than it takes to write them.

The reason for Moore’s alarm and sudden gesture of warning to me was still a mystery, when, as I stood motionless, awaiting I knew not what, there reached my ears a sound which, from where he was, he had become aware of some moments before – it was that of measured footsteps, slowly advancing from the inner end of the long conservatory. And then I realised my situation, and the necessity for effacing myself. I glanced around me. Moore had evidently taken refuge behind some of the plants inside, but I dared not follow him. Probably enough, there would only have been room to conceal one of us in the corner he had descried; for all I knew, he might be stretched on the ground at full length; a boy of his size is at great advantage in such a quandary, and Moore was not one to stick at much, at a pinch. No, less than an instant’s reflection satisfied me that I must remain out of doors, and I pressed my way behind the greenery, at the part which appeared to me the thickest.

“There is not much fear of him or them” – for it seemed to me that the footsteps were those of more than one person, though accompanied by the tap of the crutch that I had heard on a previous occasion – “coming out,” I thought. “It is getting chilly, and the cripple Mr Grey is very delicate.” And I breathed a little more freely once I felt myself screened among the bushes; fortunately, too, my dress was dark.

Still my heart beat very much faster than usual as I heard the steps coming nearer and nearer. By peeping out cautiously I could see two figures at last, as they reached the open glass door and stood there. They were those of the brothers. How I prayed that they might remain where they were; but such was not to be the case. They halted for a moment or two on the threshold, as if undecided whether to turn or walk on, then, to my unspeakable consternation, they passed out along the tonnelle past the very spot which I had only just quitted a moment or two before! Instinctively I drew myself together as if to grow as small as possible, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of being heard.

But they were talking, as I soon perceived, and to my further satisfaction, in absorbed though low tones – so absorbed that I question if any little unusual sound would have caught their attention, and after all, some slight rustling among the dripping leaves would have explained any disturbance I might involuntarily have caused.

My ears, however, were terribly on the alert, whatever theirs were not. I was in an agony lest Moore should betray his whereabouts. My fears for him and myself had completely swamped my curiosity. So it will be believed that I had no wish to overhear what the newcomers were saying. I would have stopped my ears if I had dared to do so, though, ashamed as I was of our position, I do not think it struck me in any very acute way at the time that I was forced into playing the part of an eavesdropper. And I really do not believe that in my intense engrossment I would have noticed the words that fell from the brothers, but for a peculiar circumstance – that of the mention of our own name!

One’s own name, it is said, always catches one’s attention more readily than any other word.

“Fitzmaurice,” I heard the younger brother say, as if repeating it thoughtfully, though not in any tone of surprise. “Oh yes, I agree with you, but – ”

“I know what you are going to say,” interrupted the elder, “but don’t say it. I sometimes almost regret having told even you my conviction that Ernest Fitzmaurice is the only chance of my rehabilitation. I would not of course – I would die sooner than have had the girls” (afterwards the pathos of his thus speaking of the two poor faded little old maids, whom he could not disassociate from what then must have been a quarter of a century ago, struck me pitifully) “suspect my suspicion, my conviction, I may say. And nothing, Caryll, nothing would ever make me breathe it except to you.”

The cripple sighed a deep sigh.

“I understand,” he said, “and sympathise, especially as the chance of its being any use is so small, so very small.”

“That young fellow,” resumed the elder Mr Grey, “is clever and well-meaning; acute in a remarkable degree, to have discovered that I have a secret on the subject even from his father. But the discussion tortures me, Caryll – yes, tortures me. I would not take any steps in that quarter. He must surely understand now that his persistence is useless, worse than useless.”

“I think he does,” replied the other simply.

“And after all,” he repeated half dreamily, “it is the smallest of chances. He may be dead, or undiscoverable. If what we have been talking of were the case, he would of course have the strongest motives for keeping out of the way.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said the elder Mr Grey, after a moment’s pause. “You forget that no one dreamt of such a thing but myself. He kept perfectly clear. No, he may even be a prominent person by now, for all I know, in one of the colonies – I forget which he was bound for. But one thing is certain, the man who could do what I believe he did, and act with such fearful hypocrisy, must have slain his conscience long ago. There would be no use in tracing him, and even if there were – no! I do not think I could bring upon another, above all for Jessie’s sake I could not, what I have gone through myself.”

This was all I heard distinctly. I do not imagine either of them spoke again for some moments, and by that time they were back close to the conservatory, which they entered, the elder brother closing the door after him. I took this to be a sign that they were not coming out any more.

I cannot of course, at this distance of time, vouch for the perfect accuracy of the words I have quoted, but the sense of it is exact. I was in a state of nervous tension, in which my hearing was almost abnormally quick; then the mention of our own surname had of course startled me into even closer attention, and through all, my original curiosity was still in existence, though to some extent it had become dormant. So when the time came for the question to arise as to whether I was justified in making use of my unintentional eavesdropping, I felt no misgiving as to my capability of reporting it correctly.

But for the moment, as soon as the brothers had disappeared, everything in my mind gave way to the intense wish to make our escape. Would Moore come out? Must I summon him, or should I leave him to his fate and save myself? – for to me, as a lady, the whole situation was far more grave than for a mischievous schoolboy like my brother. I was revolving these alternatives in my mind when my perplexity was set at rest by the glass door opening cautiously, and Moore’s face, somewhat paler than usual and portentously solemn, peering out. I pushed through the bushes so that he could see me, and said his name in the faintest of whispers. He heard me, and was beside me in a moment, not forgetting, however – I must say the boy had plenty of presence of mind – to close the door behind him. I did not speak – I was too angry to have done so in measured tones – so I said nothing, only grasping him by the arm to make sure of no evasion, as the two of us rushed down the tonnelle, till, breathless, I pulled up for a moment or two once I felt ourselves, comparatively speaking, safe, close against the wall and behind the shelter of the bushes bordering it.

Then I really could not contain myself, though I had intended to keep silence until we were outside the grounds.

“Moore,” I burst out, “how could you? Breaking your promise and terrifying me, and, and – ”

I could scarcely speak. I was on the point of tears, which under the circumstances I should have felt peculiarly humiliating.

The boy was distressed, and in reality, I think, not a little frightened. But he held his ground, nevertheless.

“No, Reggie,” he replied, “you must not say I broke my word. I promised I would do nothing without letting you know. And I did let you know that I had not given it up, and that I meant to do more; you dared me to, you know you did, and I called after you, ‘you shall see if I find out nothing,’ and you only laughed.”

“I call that a mean quibble,” I replied indignantly, though in my heart I felt that I had been wildly injudicious. “You did not tell me where you were going this evening before you came out.”

“No,” he replied, “I had not decided that I would come – word of honour, Reggie. And I am very sorry that I stayed so long – but – it was so tempting. I got in so easily, and everything seemed to favour it, and – ”

“Moore,” I exclaimed, “did you really go into the house? I am ashamed of you. It wasn’t like a gentleman;” and indeed I felt aghast.

“Only into that first room,” he replied deprecatingly. “I did so want to see what was behind that black curtain, though – you were right, Reggie – it isn’t black, only very dark red.”

“And what was behind it?” I could not help asking.

“Something very queer,” he answered eagerly, delighted to find that my curiosity was still in existence, “ropes and pulleys, horrid looking things. They reminded me of the Inquisition.”

“I dare say it is only a shower-bath,” I replied, “No, no, I thought of that. I am sure it isn’t,” he exclaimed. “I – ” but here I stopped him.

“Moore,” I interrupted, “we are mad to stand chattering here. Any moment some one may pass and hear us. Wait till we are safely outside the door.”

He made no objection, and we hurried on as fast as the small space before us made it possible, and we reached the door without further ado.

With no misgiving I seized the handle – for there was a handle – to pull it open, when – never shall I forget my horror! – it resisted me.

The door was locked!