A Dozen Ways Of Love - Lily Dougall (good books to read in english .txt) 📗

how to begin upon the turkey, 'we wondered very much what a dinner of "two full courses" might be, and where the "corner dishes" were to be set. We did not quite know--do you?'

'You must not have asides that are not about the people,' cried Eliz intensely. 'Catherine Moreland's mother is talking common sense to General Tilney and Sir Walter Eliot, and there'll be no end of a row in a minute if you don't divert their attention.'

Eliz had more than once to call the other two to account for talking privately adown the long table.

'What a magnificent ham!' he exclaimed. 'Do you keep pigs?'

Madge had a frank way of giving family details. 'It was once a _dear_ little pig, and we wanted to teach it to take exercise by running after us when we went out, but the stepmother, like Bunyan, "penned it"--


'"Until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see."'


More than once he saw Madge's quick wit twinkle through her booklore. When he was looking ruefully at a turkey by no means neatly carved, she gave the comforting suggestion, '"'Tis impious in a good man to be sad."'

'I thought it one of the evidences of piety.'

'It is true that he was "Young" who said it, but so are we; let us believe it fervently.'

When Madge swept across the drawing-room, with her amber skirts trailing, and Eliz had been wheeled in, they received the after-dinner visitors. Courthope could almost see the room filled with the quaint creations to whom they were both bowing and talking incessantly.

'Mr. Courthope--Miss Jane Fairfax--I believe you have met before.' Madge's voice dropped in a well-feigned absorption in her next guest; but she soon found time again to whisper to him a long speech which Miss Bates had made to Eliz. Soon afterwards she came flying to him in the utmost delight to repeat what she called a "lovely sneap" which Lady G---- had given to Mrs. Elton; nor did she forget to tell him that Emma Woodhouse was explaining to the Portuguese nun her reasons for deciding never to marry. 'Out of sheer astonishment she appears to become quite tranquillised,' said Madge, as if relating an important fact.

His curiosity concerning this nun grew apace, for she seemed a favourite with both the girls.

When it was near midnight the imaginary pageant suddenly came to an end, as in all cases of enchantment. Eliz grew tired; one of the lamps smoked and had to be extinguished; the fire had burned low. Madge declared that the company had departed.

She went out of the room to call the servant, but in a few minutes she came back discomfited, a little pout on her lips. 'Isn't it tiresome! Mathilde and Jacques Morin have gone to bed.'

'It is just like them,' fretted Eliz.

At the fretful voice Madge's face cleared. 'What does it matter?' she cried. 'We are perfectly happy.'

She lifted the lamp with which he had first seen her, and commenced an inspection of doors and shutters. It was a satisfaction to Courthope to see the house. It was a French building, as were all the older houses in that part of the country, heavily built, simple in the arrangements of its rooms. Every door on the lower floor stood open, inviting the heat of a large central stove. Insisting upon carrying the lamp while Madge made her survey, he was introduced to a library at the end of the drawing-room, to a large house-place or kitchen behind the dining-room; these with his own room made the square of the lower story. A wing adjoining the further side was devoted to the Morins. Having performed her duty as householder, Madge said good-night.

'We have enjoyed it ever so much more because you were here.' She held out her hand; her face was radiant; he knew that she spoke the simple truth.

She lifted the puny Eliz in her arms and proceeded to walk slowly up the straight staircase which occupied one half of the long central hall. The crimson scarfs hanging from Eliz, the length of her own silk gown, embarrassed her; she stopped a moment on the second step, resting her burden upon one lifted knee to clutch and gather the gorgeous raiment in her hand.

'You see we put on mother's dresses, that have always been packed away in the garret.'

Very simply she said this to Courthope, who stood holding a lamp to light them in their ascent. He waited until the glinting colours of their satins, the slow motion of the burden-bearer's form, reached the top and were lost in the shadows of an open door.


CHAPTER III

Courthope opened the shutters of his window to look out upon the night; they were heavy wooden shutters clasped with an iron clasp. A French window he could also open; outside that a temporary double window was fixed in the casement with light hooks at the four corners. The wind was still blustering about the lonely house, and, after examining the twilight of the snow-clad night attentively, he perceived that snow was still falling. He thought he could almost see the drifts rising higher against the out-buildings.

Two large barns stood behind the house; from these he judged that the fields around were farmed.

It was considerations concerning the project of his journey the next day which had made him look out, and also a restless curiosity regarding every detail of the _menage_ whose young mistress was at once so child-like and so queenlike. While looking out he had what seemed a curious hallucination of a dark figure standing for a moment on the top of the deep snow. As he looked more steadily the figure disappeared. All the outlines at which he looked were chaotic to the sight, because of the darkness and the drifting snow, and the light which was behind him shimmering upon the pane. If half-a-dozen apparitions had passed in the dim and whirling atmosphere of the yards, he would have supposed that they were shadows formed by the beams of his lamp, being interrupted here and there by the eddying snow where the wind whirled it most densely. He did not close his shutters, he even left his inner window partially open, because, unaccustomed to a stove, he felt oppressed by its heat. When he threw himself down, he slept deeply, as men sleep after days among snowfields, when a sense of entire security is the lethargic brain's lullaby.

He was conscious first of a dream in which the sisters experienced some imminent danger; he heard their shrieks piercing the night. He woke to feel snow and wind driving upon his face, to realise a half-waking impression that a man had passed through his room, to know that the screams of a woman's voice were a reality. As he sprang for his clothes he saw that the window was wide open, the whole frame of the outer double glass having been removed, but the screams of terror he heard were within the house. Opening the door to the dark hall he ran, guided by the sound, to the foot of the staircase which the girls had ascended, then up its long straight ascent. He took its first steps in a bound, but, as his brain became more perfectly awake, confusion of thought, wonder, a certain timidity because now the screaming had ceased, caused him to slacken his pace. He was thus hesitating in the darkness when he found himself confronted by Madge King. She stood majestic in grey woollen gown, candle in hand, and her dark eyes blazed upon him in terror, wrath and indignation.

It seemed for a moment that she could not speak; some movement passed over the white sweep of her throat and the full dimpling lips, and then--

'Go down!' She would have spoken to a dog with the same authority, but never with such contemptuous wrath. 'Go down at once! How dare you!'

Abashed, knowing not what he might have done to offend, Courthope fell back a step against the wall of the staircase. From within the room Eliz cried, 'Is he there? Come in and lock the door, Madge, or he'll kill you!' The voice, sharp, high with terror, rose at the end, and burst into one of those piercing shrieks which seemed to fill the night, as the voices of some small insects have the power to make the welkin ring in response.

Before Courthope could find a word to utter, another light was thrown upon him from a lamp at the foot of the stair. It was held by Jacques Morin, grey-haired, stooping, dogged. The Morin family--man, wife and daughter--were huddling close together. They, too, were all looking at him, not with the wrath and contempt to which Madge had risen, but with cunning desire for revenge, mingled with the cringing of fear. There was a minute's hush, too strong for expression, in which each experienced more intensely the shock of the mysterious alarm.

It was Madge who broke the silence. Her voice rang clear, although vibrating.

'Jacques Morin, he came into our room to rob!' She pointed at Courthope.

The thin voice of Eliz came in piercing parenthesis: 'I saw him in the closet, and when I screamed he ran.'

Madge began again. 'Jacques Morin, what part of the house is open? I feel the wind.' All the time Madge kept her eyes upon Courthope, as upon some wild animal whose spring she hoped to keep at bay.

That she should appeal to this dull, dogged French servant for protection against him, who only desired to risk his life to serve her, was knowledge of such intense vexation that Courthope could still find no word, and her fixed look of wrath did actually keep him at bay. It took from him, by some sheer physical power which he did not understand, the courage with which he would have faced a hundred Morins.

When Jacques Morin began to speak, his wife and daughter took courage and spoke also; a babel of French words, angry, terrified, arose from the group, whose grey night-clothes, shaken by their gesticulations, gave them a half-frenzied appearance.

In the midst of their talking Courthope spoke to Madge at last. 'I ran up to protect you when I heard screams; I did not wake till you screamed. Some one has entered the house. He has entered by the window in my room; I found it open.'

With his own words the situation became clear to him. He saw that he must hunt for the house-breaker. He began to descend the stairs.

The Morin girl screamed and ran. Morin, producing a gun from behind his back, pointed it at Courthope, and madam, holding the lamp, squared up behind her husband with the courage of desperation.

It was not this fantastic couple that checked Courthope's downward rush, but Madge's voice.

'Keep still!' she cried, in short strong accents of command.

Eliz, becoming aware of his movement, shrieked again.

Courthope, now defiant and angry, turned towards Madge, but, even as he waited to hear what she had to say, reflected that her interest could not suffer much by delay, for the thief, if he escaped, could make but small speed in the drifting storm over roads which led to no near place of escape or hiding.

It was the judge's daughter which Courthope now saw in Madge--the desire to estimate evidence, the fearless judgment.

'We took you in last night, a stranger; and now we have been robbed, which never happened