Imprimis, he was stretched at full length on a couch which he afterwards found to be made of mahogany, with old-fashioned cushions and a pillow of horsehair considerably2 the worse for wear. The only other furniture comprised a small octagonal table, and a couple of straight-backed chairs of unpolished oak, apparently3 of some antiquity4. Stay, though; in one corner was placed a common washstand and toilet service, such as in middle-class households are reserved for servants' cubicles5. The room itself was neither very large nor very lofty, but it was undeniably bare-looking, walls and ceiling being alike washed a dull creamy white. The room was lighted by one long, narrow window, with leaded lozenge-shaped panes6 of thick greenish glass, but placed so high up in the wall that a man had need to be full six feet high for his eyes to be on a level with its lowest panes. As the room had but one window, so it had but one door, which, like the table and the chairs, seemed to be of substantial oak.
But although he had satisfied himself as to the kind of place in which he was, that did not help him to solve the question of where he was. His ears were filled with a long, low, murmurous7 wash, which now struck his consciousness for the first time. He at once recognised it for what it was. "It is the noise of the incoming tide," he said to himself. "And this place? Is it--can it be that I have been brought to the Wizard's Tower?"
Everything was clear to him now, without any mental groping backward, up to the moment when he was struck down as he stood by the edge of the plantation9. He had been the object of a foul10 and cowardly attack, and it was not difficult to guess to whose instigation he owed it. More than ever did he realise at that moment with how resolute11 and unscrupulous an antagonist12 he had to deal.
But why was he lying there? At once he sprang to his feet, but as he did so an involuntary "Ah!" escaped him, and the same instant he clapped both his hands to the back of his head. He had not known till then that he was wounded. But with the change in his position the pain made itself sharply felt, and presently his fingers informed him that the hair round the wound had been cut away, and the place itself covered with strips of sticking-plaster. To such an extent had he been tended and cared for. Just then, however, his wound was a matter of quite secondary importance. Having, as he believed, rightly guessed to what place he had been conveyed while unconscious, the all-important question at once put itself to him: "Am I a prisoner?"
His heart foreboded the answer but too surely. He crossed to the door and turned the handle. It was enough.
While he stood staring at the door like a man half dazed, he noticed that in the upper half of it there was a panel, about a couple of feet square, which looked as if it were movable, and on trying it with his hand he found that it slid back in a groove13, leaving an aperture14 of its own size, of which Burgo at once proceeded to avail himself as a peep-hole. But what he could discern through it scarcely repaid him for his trouble--merely another space of whitewashed15 wall, as it might be that of a landing, with the two topmost steps of a flight of stone stairs leading to unknown regions below. Then it struck Burgo that the aperture might perchance be available for another purpose. Putting one arm through it up to the shoulder he proceeded to search for the bolt or key which held him prisoner, but neither one nor the other could he find. Whoever had locked him in had been careful to remove the key. Well, he had hardly expected anything else.
He now bethought himself to look at his watch. It was close on seven o'clock. It had been somewhere about ten o'clock when he was struck down, so that his unconsciousness had lasted for nearly nine hours. No wonder that his head smarted as it did.
It was not till later, when he had ample leisure for thinking things over, that there seemed to come over him a sort of dim consciousness that in the course of the night something had been given him to swallow, and that in his ears there had been a faint, confused murmur8 of voices, as of people talking a long way off; but it had all been so vague and unreal that he could never feel sure it was aught but a dream.
Having pushed the sliding panel back into its place, he crossed to the window, and found that, after stretching himself to his fullest height, his eyes were just on a level with the lowermost panes. It was evident that by standing16 on a chair his range of vision would be considerably enlarged, and that was what he at once proceeded to do. As he had quite expected it would, the window looked directly on the sea, and on nothing else. Whichever way he turned his eyes not a strip of land was visible. He could no longer doubt that he was shut up in the Wizard's Tower. Now that he had, as it were, explored his tiny domain17, he sat down to think, but as yet his brain was so crowded with impressions, all more or less vivid, which involved the putting of so many more or less unanswerable questions, that to attempt to evolve therefrom any definite and consistent line of thought was for the present an impossibility.
Not long had he sat before his attention was caught by a faint grating noise, as it might be the turning of a rusty18 key, which was presently followed by the sound of shuffling19 footsteps ascending20 the stone stairs from below. Then the sliding panel was thrust back, and, framed by the aperture, Burgo beheld21 the yellow, wrinkled visage of a very old and very unprepossessing female, who stood for some seconds, gazing at him with weak and watery22 eyes, before she spoke23.
"If you please, sir, I've brought you your breakfus," she said at length in a thin quavering treble, "so, m'appen you'll please to take the things as I hands 'em to you."
Burgo crossed to the door, and from the tray the old lady had brought with her, which she had placed on the floor before opening the slide, she handed to him, one by one, the various concomitants of a fairly good and substantial breakfast.
"And now, mother, if you will tell me what place this is, I shall be much obliged to you," said Burgo, as, last of all, he took from her hand a small coffee-pot.
The old woman favoured him with what to most people would have seemed a cunning leer, but which she may have intended for an amiable24 grin. "I can tell by the motion of your lips as you're a-talking to me," she piped; "but I couldn't hear a word you say, no, not even if you shouted ever so. I've been stone deaf for the last dozen years. I'll fetch the breakfus things away when I brings your dinner." And, with a parting nod, she shut the slide and shuffled25 her way downstairs. Then came a muffled26 sound, as it might be the shutting of a heavy door, followed by the same grating noise as before.
Burgo was hungry, and was glad to be able to stay his appetite. He had a few cigarettes left in his case, and it may be that he enjoyed smoking a couple of them after breakfast none the less because his fortunes just then were at such a desperate pass. It was over his second cigarette that he came to the sensible conclusion to no longer badger27 his brains with a lot of vain surmises28 and questions which he had no means of answering, but rather to await the course of events quietly, and with such philosophy as he could summon to his aid. Any other course would be both futile30 and unmanly. Lady Clinton had got him into her power, and for the present he could but submit to that which it was out of his power to help.
In pursuance of this more cheerful way of looking at things he presently stretched himself on the sofa, and before long was fortunate enough to forget all his anxieties in sleep.
It was noon when he awoke. After a stare round he rose and shook himself. "I'm neither a Monte Cristo nor a Jack31 Sheppard," he said, "but I may as well satisfy myself whether there is or is not the remotest chance of my being able to escape from this confounded hole." So he again turned his attention to the door. It was very heavy and strong, and, judging from appearances, could not have been less than a century old, while, although the lock was probably of a very simple kind, it would obviously be impossible for him to pick it without adequate tools. He had a pocket-knife with three blades, which fortunately had not been taken from him. Would it be possible by its means to cut away sufficient of the woodwork round the lock--it was of tough old oak--to allow of his forcing the bolt? But even should he prove so far successful, what then? At the foot of the stairs he would find himself confronted by another door, most likely by two, for he had not forgotten what Tyson had told him about the opening up of the underground passage from the Keep. Nor had he forgotten what the door which opened from the tower on to the cliff was like. It was twice as massive, and would prove twice as formidable an obstacle to overcome as the door of his chamber32. Not much hope of escape could he perceive that way. Still, the subject was one which might repay careful thought by-and-by--for he had already concluded that the tower would have to be his home for some time to come--when he should have become familiar with the daily routine of his prison life, and knew for how many hours he could depend upon being left unvisited by any one.
The window as a possible means of escape proved hopeless from the first. It was narrow to begin with, and was rendered altogether impassable for any one bigger than a child of six by a couple of massive upright bars. In one corner of the room was an open fireplace with a chimney, but when Burgo stared up the murky33 throat of the latter, he felt that he would have to be reduced to very desperate straits indeed before he ventured to explore it.
At half-past two the same old woman brought him his dinner, passing the dishes to him one by one as before, and receiving in return the breakfast things left from morning. "If you please, sir," she said, "I was to tell you that if there's anything you specially34 want, would you write it down on a piece of paper and give it to me." Thereupon she handed him through the aperture pen, ink, and a couple of sheets of paper.
Burgo gave vent29 to a low whistle of surprise. Then, after considering for a few moments, he sat down and wrote as under:
"If it be your intention to detain me here for any length of time, you may, if you please, add to the burden of my obligations by letting me have my portmanteau and contents, which will be found at the inn of the 'Golden Owl35,' in Crag End. If, at the same time, you will settle my little bill there, I will recoup you the amount.
"I enclose a note to the landlord authorising him to give up my chattels36 to whomsoever you may send for them."
The note to Tyson which he enclosed was signed "Burgo Lumsden."
The old woman took the notes, favoured him with another leer, and went.
As Burgo sat eating his dinner to the accompaniment of an excellent bottle of claret, having agreed to thrust his cares aside for a while, his thoughts went wandering hither and thither37 as they listed, touching38 now on things serious and now on others which were just as trivial. Among other matters which thus casually39 claimed his thoughts he found himself wondering again what purpose the sliding panel in the door had been originally intended to serve. But after a time a light broke on him. "This must have been one of the rooms occupied by the old fellow Tyson told me about, who used to shut himself up in the tower for weeks at a time, and it was doubtless put to the same use by him that it is put to now. His laboratory was sacred ground; no foot save his own must cross its threshold; and his food was handed to him through the aperture as mine is to-day." In the lack of all possibility of getting at the facts of the case, it seemed as likely an explanation as could have been arrived at.
Burgo got through the afternoon as he best could. He spent a considerable portion of the time resting his elbows on the window-sill, his head supported by his hands, gazing out at the heaving expanse of water which bounded the whole visible line of his horizon, watching with his eyes, while far away in thought, an occasional moving pennon of smoke on the line where sky and water seemed to meet, or the gleam of a white sail in the offing. In his ears was the soft, murmurous thunder of the tide, for ever either coming or going. A portion of the lower half of the window formed a casement40 which was now flung wide open. The autumn airs blew soft and sweet; in their caresses41 lingered a memory of departed summer.
As he stood thus he could not help telling himself that all which had befallen him since he left the "Golden Owl" at nine o'clock the previous night was more like a fragment of some distempered dream than the grim reality it had proved itself to be. That he should have been assaulted, kidnapped, and locked up in an old border tower was an incident such as might well have happened even as lately as a hundred years ago, but which seemed an anachronism, and altogether out of keeping with the prosaic42 realities of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. And yet, incredible as it might be deemed, it had happened to him. He was there a prisoner, and when or in what way his imprisonment43 would end, he could guess no more than the man in the moon. It might be that the design was to keep him safe under lock and key till his uncle's illness should have terminated in the only way it was intended it should terminate, and that, he felt sure, would not be till after the 12th of October. Or, again, it might be that even then steps were being taken to remove his uncle still further away, perhaps to some place abroad, where no helping44 hand would avail to reach him. It seemed monstrous45 to imagine that such a hellish plot could be carried out with impunity46 at this time of day, and all the safeguards which the law has devised against wrong-doing quietly ignored and treated as if they had no existence. Yes, it did indeed seem monstrous; but, as most of us have learnt to our cost, facts are stubborn things.
It was nearly dark before the old woman made her appearance for the third time. Following the unlocking of the door, somewhere below stairs came the sound of a dog's deep baying, mingled47 with a man's voice addressing some one in imperative48 accents. Although it was not yet seven o'clock the old lady had brought Burgo his supper. He had not been used to such a primitive49 arrangement of his meals, but it would have been folly50 to complain. When he had exchanged his empty dishes for full ones, the woman said: "I've a lot o' things downstairs for you--a lamp, and a couple o' blankits, and a piller, and your porkmantle--which I'll now fetch up; but afore I open the door and give 'em to you, you must pass me your sacred word of honour not to try to leave the room. I can't hear a word, as you know, but if you're ready and willing to swear not to try to escape, sinnify the same by holding up your right hand."
A moment's thought convinced Burgo that no other course was open to him, so up went his right hand.
The old woman leered and nodded; then, beckoning51 him to go nearer, she said: "Besides, where would be the use of your trying to get away? He's down there"--with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder--"on the watch with one of his big dogs. Eh! but they're dangerous brutes52, and he's a dangerous man, and he would think nothing of letting the beast loose to fly at your throat."
With the last word she was gone. But presently she reappeared, dragging Burgo's portmanteau up the stairs, after which she fetched up in turn a couple of blankets, a pillow, and a lamp. Then, not without some difficulty she succeeded in unlocking the door, after which she took in the things, Burgo meanwhile discussing his supper quietly at the table.
"And now, sir, I'll wish you a very good-night and pleasant dreams," said the old girl presently, "for I shan't trouble you any more till I bring your breakfus in the morning." Then in rapid whisper, and with another jerk of her thumb: "He's a devil, that's what he is--a devil!"
Half a minute later the key was turned in the lock, the slide shut, and Burgo was left alone for the night.
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1
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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cubicles
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| n.小卧室，斗室( cubicle的名词复数 ) | |
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panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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murmurous
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| adj.低声的 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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11
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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aperture
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| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
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15
whitewashed
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| 粉饰，美化，掩饰( whitewash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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26
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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badger
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| v.一再烦扰，一再要求，纠缠 | |
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surmises
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的第三人称单数 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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41
caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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42
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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43
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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44
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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45
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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46
impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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47
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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48
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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49
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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50
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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51
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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52
brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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