The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins [best historical biographies .TXT] 📗

the exercise of the one faculty of listening.

It was a still, faint, stealthily rustling sound; and it moved to and fro at intervals, to and fro softly, now at one end, now at the other of the Myrtle Room. There were moments when it grew suddenly distinct⁠—other moments when it died away in gradations too light to follow. Sometimes it seemed to sweep over the floor at a bound⁠—sometimes it crept with slow, continuous rustlings that just wavered on the verge of absolute silence.

Her feet still rooted to the spot on which she stood, Sarah turned her head slowly, inch by inch, toward the door of the Myrtle Room. A moment before, while she was as yet unconscious of the faint sound moving to and fro within it, she had been drawing her breath heavily and quickly. She might have been dead now, her bosom was so still, her breathing so noiseless. The same mysterious change came over her face which had altered it when the darkness began to gather in the little parlor at Truro. The same fearful look of inquiry which she had then fixed on the vacant corner of the room was in her eyes now, as they slowly turned on the door.

“Mistress!” she whispered. “Am I too late? Are you there before me?”

The stealthily rustling sound inside paused⁠—renewed itself⁠—died away again faintly; away at the lower end of the room.

Her eyes still remained fixed on the Myrtle Room, strained, and opened wider and wider⁠—opened as if they would look through the very door itself⁠—opened as if they were watching for the opaque wood to turn transparent, and show what was behind it.

“Over the lonesome floor, over the lonesome floor⁠—how light it moves!” she whispered again. “Mistress! does the black dress I made for you rustle no louder than that?”

The sound stopped again⁠—then suddenly advanced at one stealthy sweep close to the inside of the door.

If she could have moved at that moment; if she could have looked down to the line of open space between the bottom of the door and the flooring below, when the faintly rustling sound came nearest to her, she might have seen the insignificant cause that produced it lying self-betrayed under the door, partly outside, partly inside, in the shape of a fragment of faded red paper from the wall of the Myrtle Room. Time and damp had loosened the paper all round the apartment. Two or three yards of it had been torn off by the builder while he was examining the walls⁠—sometimes in large pieces, sometimes in small pieces, just as it happened to come away⁠—and had been thrown down by him on the bare, boarded floor, to become the sport of the wind, whenever it happened to blow through the broken panes of glass in the window. If she had only moved! If she had only looked down for one little second of time!

She was past moving and past looking: the paroxysm of superstitious horror that possessed her held her still in every limb and every feature. She never started, she uttered no cry, when the rustling noise came nearest. The one outward sign which showed how the terror of its approach shook her to the very soul expressed itself only in the changed action of her right hand, in which she still held the keys. At the instant when the wind wafted the fragment of paper closest to the door, her fingers lost their power of contraction, and became as nerveless and helpless as if she had fainted. The heavy bunch of keys slipped from her suddenly loosened grasp, dropped at her side on the outer edge of the landing, rolled off through a gap in the broken banister, and fell on the stone pavement below, with a crash which made the sleeping echoes shriek again, as if they were sentient beings writhing under the torture of sound!

The crash of the falling keys, ringing and ringing again through the stillness, woke her, as it were, to instant consciousness of present events and present perils. She started, staggered backward, and raised both her hands wildly to her head⁠—paused so for a few seconds⁠—then made for the top of the stairs with the purpose of descending into the hall to recover the keys.

Before she had advanced three paces the shrill sound of a woman’s scream came from the door of communication at the opposite end of the hall. The scream was twice repeated at a greater distance off, and was followed by a confused noise of rapidly advancing voices and footsteps.

She staggered desperately a few paces farther, and reached the first of the row of doors that opened on the landing. There nature sank exhausted: her knees gave way under her⁠—her breath, her sight, her hearing all seemed to fail her together at the same instant⁠—and she dropped down senseless on the floor at the head of the stairs.

IV Mr. Munder on the Seat of Judgment

The murmuring voices and the hurrying footsteps came nearer and nearer, then stopped altogether. After an interval of silence, one voice called out loudly, “Sarah! Sarah! where are you?” and the next instant Uncle Joseph appeared alone in the doorway that led into the north hall, looking eagerly all round him.

At first the prostrate figure on the landing at the head of the stairs escaped his view. But the second time he looked in that direction the dark dress, and the arm that lay just over the edge of the top stair, caught his eye. With a loud cry of terror and recognition, he flew across the hall and ascended the stairs. Just as he was kneeling by Sarah’s side, and raising her head on his arm, the steward, the housekeeper, and the maid, all three crowded together after him into the doorway.

“Water!” shouted the old man, gesticulating at them wildly with his disengaged hand. “She is here⁠—she has fallen down⁠—she is in a faint! Water! water!”

Mr. Munder looked at Mrs. Pentreath, Mrs. Pentreath