The first paroxysm of despair subsided6 into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent7: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy8. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect9 having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending10 towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picture — the same motion without progress — the same dreadful suspense11 and impatience12.
I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld13 Madame darkly eyeing first one than another point of the chamber14, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage15 moods — sometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding16, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth.
She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar17 fragrance18 that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.
I had not moved since she left my room.
She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wild-beast stare.
“You are a very secrete19 family, you Ruthyns — you are som coning20. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away to-night. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis.”
Madame’s words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg’s journey was already frustrated21; she was not to reach Elverston in time.
Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling22 the scanty23 furniture hither and thither24 as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid25 crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently26 taken into confidence as to what was intended for me.
It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering.
I was listening for signals of deliverance. At every distant sound, half stifled27 with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible and exaggerated distinctness —“Oh Meg! — Oh cousin Monica! — Oh come! Oh Heaven, have mercy! — Lord, have mercy!” I thought I heard a roaring and jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Ucnle Silas’s room. It might have been the tipsy violence of Madame. It might — merciful Heaven! — be the arrival of friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was it in my brain? — was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open. I fled wildly. There was a subsiding28 sound of voices in my uncle’s room. I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stair-head outside my uncle’s apartment. My hand was on the banisters, my foot on the first step, when below me and against the faint light that glimmered29 through the great window on the landing I saw a bulky human form ascending, and a voice said “Hush!” I staggered back, and that instant fancied, with a thrill of conviction, I heard Lady Knollys’s voice in Uncle Silas’s room.
I don’t know how I entered the room; I was there like a ghost. I was frightened at my own state.
Lady Knollys was not there — no one but Madame and my guardian30.
I can never forget the look that Uncle Silas fixed31 on me as he cowered32, seemingly as appalled33 as I.
I think I must have looked like a phantom34 newly risen from the grave.
“What’s that? — where do you come from?” whispered he.
“Death! death!” was my whispered answer, as I froze with terror where I stood.
“What does she mean? — what does all this mean?” said Uncle Silas, recovering wonderfully, and turning with a withering35 sneer36 on Madame. “Do you think it right to disobey my plain directions, and let her run about the house at this hour?”
“Death! death! Oh, pray to God for you and me!” I whispered in the same dreadful tones.
My uncle stared strangely at me again; and after several horrible seconds, in which he seemed to have recovered himself, he said, sternly and coolly —
“You give too much place to your imagination, niece. Your spirits are in an odd state — you ought to have advice.”
“Oh, uncle, pity me! Oh, uncle, you are good! you’re kind; you’re kind when you think. You could not — you could not — could not! Oh, think of your brother that was always good to you! He sees me here. He sees us both. Oh, save me, uncle — save me! — and I’ll give up everything to you. I’ll pray to God to bless you — I’ll never forget your goodness and mercy. But don’t keep me in doubt. If I’m to go, oh, for God’s sake, shoot me now!”
“You were always odd, niece; I begin to fear you are insane,” he replied, in the same stern icy tone.
“Oh, uncle — oh! — am I? Am I mad?”
“I hope not; but you’ll conduct yourself like a sane37 person if you wish to enjoy the privileges of one.”
Then, with his finger pointing at me, he turned to Madame, and said, in a tone of suppressed ferocity —
“What’s the meaning of this? — why is she here?”
Madame was gabbling volubly, but to me it was only a shrilly38 noise. My whole soul was concentrated in my uncle, the arbiter39 of my life, before whom I stood in the wildest agony of supplication40.
That night was dreadful. The people I saw dizzily, made of smoke or shining vapour, smiling or frowning, I could have passed my hand through them. They were evil spirits.
“There’s no ill intended you; by ——— there’s none,” said my uncle, for the first time violently agitated41. “Madame told you why we’ve changed your room. You told her about the bailiffs, did not you?” with a stamp of fury he demanded of Madame, whose nasal roullades of talk were running on like an accompaniment all the time. She had told me indeed only a few hours since, and now it sounded to me like the echo of something heard a month ago or more.
“You can’t go about the house, d — n im, with bailiffs in occupation. There now — there’s the whole thing. Get to your room, Maud, and don’t vex42 me. There’s a good girl.”
He was trying to smile as he spoke43 these last words, and, with quavering soft tones, to quiet me; but the old scowl44 was there, the smile was corpse-like and contorted, and the softness of his tones was more dreadful than another man’s ferocity.
“There, Madame, she’ll go quite gently, and you can call if you want help. Don’t let it happen again.”
“Come, Maud,” said Madame, encircling but not hurting my arm with her grip; “let us go, my friend.”
I did go, you will wonder, as well you may — as you may wonder at the docility45 with which strong men walk through the press-room to the drop, and thank the people of the prison for their civility when they bid them good-bye, and facilitate the fixing of the rope and adjusting of the cap. Have you never wondered that they don’t make a last battle for life with the unscrupulous energy of terror, instead of surrendering it so gently in cold blood, on a silent calculation, the arithmetic of despair?
I went upstairs with Madame like a somnambulist. I rather quickened my step as I drew near my room. I went in, and stood a phantom at the window, looking into the dark quadrangle. A thin glimmering46 crescent hung in the frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at the other side spread on the dark azure47 of the night this glorious blazonry of the unfathomable Creator. To me a dreadful scroll48 — inexorable eyes — the cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers and agonies.
I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silas’s littered room, and the travelling bags and black boxes piled on the floor by his table — the desk, hat-case, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready for a journey — reached my brain and suggested thought. The mise en scène had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I wondered —“When is he going — how soon? Is he going to carry me away and place me in a madhouse?”
“Am I— am I mad?” I began to think. “Is this all a dream, or is it real?”
I remembered how a thin polite gentleman, with a tall grizzled head and a black velvet49 waistcoat, came into the carriage on our journey, and said a few words to me; how Madame whispered him something, and he murmured “Oh!” very gently, with raised eyebrows50, and a glance at me, and thenceforward spoke no more to me, only to Madame, and at the next station carried his hat and other travelling chattels51 into another carriage. Had she told him I was mad?
These horrid bars! Madame always with me! The direful hints that dropt from my uncle! My own terrific sensations! — All these evidences revolved52 in my brain, and presented themselves in turn like writings on a wheel of fire.
There came a knock to the door —
Oh, Meg! Was it she? No; old Wyat whispered Madame something about her room.
So Madame re-entered, with a little silver tray and flagon in her hands, and a glass. Nothing came from Uncle Silas in ungentlemanlike fashion.
“Drink, Maud,” said Madame, raising the cover, and evidently enjoying the fragrant53 steam.
I could not. I might have done so had I been able to swallow anything — for I was too distracted to think of Meg’s warning.
Madame suddenly recollected54 her mistake of the evening, and tried the door; but it was duly locked. She took the key from her pocket and placed it in her breast.
“You weel ‘av these rooms to yourself, ma chère. I shall sleep downstairs to-night.”
She poured out some of the hot claret into the glass abstractedly, and drank it off.
“’Tis very good — I drank without theenk. Bote ’tis very good. Why don’t you drink some?”
“I could not,” I repeated. And Madame boldly helped herself.
“Vary polite, certally, to Madame was it to send nothing at all for hair” (so she pronounced “her”); “bote is all same thing.” And so she ran on in her tipsy vein55, which was loud and sarcastic56, with a fierce laugh now and then.
Afterwards I heard that they were afraid of Madame, who was given to cross purposes, and violent in her cups. She had been noisy and quarrelsome downstairs. She was under the delusion57 that I was to be conveyed away that night to a remote and safe place, and she was to be handsomely compensated58 for services and evidence to be afterwards given. She was not to be trusted, however, with the truth. That was to be know but to three persons on earth.
I never knew, but I believe that the spiced claret which Madame drank was drugged. She was a person who could, I have been told, drink a great deal without exhibiting any change from it but an inflamed59 colour and furious temper. I can only state for certain what I saw, and that was, that shortly after she had finished the claret she lay down upon my bed, and, I now know, fell asleep. I then thought she was feigning60 sleep only, and that she was really watching me.
About an hour after this I suddenly heard a little clink in the yard beneath. I peeped out, but saw nothing. The sound was repeated, however — sometimes more frequently, sometimes at long intervals61. At last, in the deep shadow next the farther wall, I thought I could discover a figure, sometimes erect62, sometimes stooping and bowing toward the earth. I could see this figure only in the rudest outline mingling63 with the dark.
Like a thunderbolt it smote64 my brain. “They are making my grave!”
After the first dreadful stun65 I grew quite wild, and ran up and down the room wringing my hands and gasping66 prayers to heaven. Then a calm stole over me — such a dreadful calm as I could fancy glide67 over one who floated in a boat under the shadow of the “Traitor’s Gate,” leaving life and hope and trouble behind.
Shortly after there came a very low tap at my door; then another, like a tiny post-knock. I could never understand why it was I made no answer. Had I done so, and thus shown that I was awake, it might have sealed my fate. I was standing68 in the middle of the floor staring at the door, which I expected to see open, and admit I knew not what troop of spectres.
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1
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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2
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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3
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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6
subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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7
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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9
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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10
ascending
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| adj.上升的，向上的 | |
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11
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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12
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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13
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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14
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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15
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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16
protruding
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
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17
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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18
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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19
secrete
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| vt.分泌；隐匿，使隐秘 | |
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20
coning
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| 形成圆锥形；舌进；堆锥四分取样法；水舌形成 | |
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21
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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22
hustling
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| 催促（hustle的现在分词形式） | |
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23
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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24
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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25
horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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26
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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27
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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28
subsiding
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的现在分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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29
glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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30
guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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31
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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32
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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33
appalled
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| v.使惊骇，使充满恐惧( appall的过去式和过去分词)adj.惊骇的；丧胆的 | |
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34
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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35
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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36
sneer
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| v.轻蔑；嘲笑；n.嘲笑，讥讽的言语 | |
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37
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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38
shrilly
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| 尖声的； 光亮的，耀眼的 | |
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39
arbiter
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| n.仲裁人，公断人 | |
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40
supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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41
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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42
vex
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| vt.使烦恼，使苦恼 | |
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43
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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44
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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45
docility
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| n.容易教，易驾驶，驯服 | |
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46
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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47
azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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48
scroll
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| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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49
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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50
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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51
chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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52
revolved
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| v.（使）旋转( revolve的过去式和过去分词 )；细想 | |
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53
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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54
recollected
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| adj.冷静的；镇定的；被回忆起的；沉思默想的v.记起，想起( recollect的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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56
sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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57
delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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58
compensated
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| 补偿，报酬( compensate的过去式和过去分词 )； 给（某人）赔偿（或赔款） | |
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59
inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60
feigning
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| 假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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61
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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62
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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63
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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64
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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65
stun
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| vt.打昏，使昏迷，使震惊，使惊叹 | |
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66
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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67
glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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68
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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