Rutledge Part 52

"Will you dance the next set with me?" asked Ellerton.

"With great pleasure."

"Then it's but fair we should leave her," said Phil, and they moved away. Kitty, as I reached the upper hall, made me a hasty gesture to turn out the light at the head of the stairs. I obeyed, and in a moment the lights at that end of the hall were all extinguished, and only one left burning dimly at the other extremity.

"Quick!" whispered Kitty. "Mrs. Roberts is in her room. I have the key."

We hurried toward her, groping along the dark pa.s.sage. The heavy wardrobe moved from its place with a dull, rumbling sound; the key grated in the unused lock.

"Quick! quick!" whispered Victor. "There is a step on the stairs!" There was a cruel moment of suspense as the key refused to turn; Victor held my hand in his with a grasp of iron; a low cry of despair burst from Kitty, as the step on the stairs mounted quickly. It was a matter of life and death indeed; discovery seemed inevitable now.

"Push, push it with all your might," I cried in an agony, "perhaps it will give way!"

"Thank heaven!" murmured Victor, as it yielded to her desperate strength. In less time than it takes to speak it, the door closed upon him, the wardrobe was pushed back to its place.

"What is the meaning of this?" said the stern voice of the master at the head of the stairs. "Why are the lights put out? Who is there?

Answer me."

Kitty thrust me into the nearest room, and advanced to meet her angry master.

"It's me, sir--Kitty; and I was just come up myself to see what had made it so dark up here; I think, sir, that the north windows there have been left open, and the wind has come up strong from that way, and the draught has put them out. It was very careless of Mrs. Roberts not to look after it," she continued, busying herself in relighting the lamps.

"Kitty," said Mr. Rutledge in a voice that I knew had more terror for the girl, than any other in the world, "your falsehoods are very ready, but they can never deceive me, remember that. Tell me promptly who put the lamps out."

"The fact is, master," she said dropping her eyes and looking contrite as she approached him, "my poor young lady has had a fainting-fit down stairs, and she wanted to get to her own room without anybody recognizing her, so I turned the lights out, for several of the young gentlemen were waiting about the stairs to see what room she'd go to."

"That lie is even more ingenious than the first. It is useless to question you further; you do not know how to speak the truth even when it is the best policy. Bring that light and follow me."

"Don't scold Kitty," I said, faintly, coming forward. "It was my fault, I wanted the lights put out. I thought it would do no harm, just for a moment, but I beg your pardon."

Mr. Rutledge turned abruptly away with a curling lip. "Mistress and maid together are too much for a plain man like me. I accept whatever interpretation you choose to put upon it." And he strode angrily down the stairs.

"Take off your domino and go down quick!" exclaimed Kitty.

"Oh Kitty! How can I? I can hardly stand, I am so faint."

"No matter," she said, inexorably. "Everybody will be wondering if you don't come, and there's been enough already! Take this, Miss, and do be brave, and don't give way."

She poured me out a dose of valerian; I swallowed it, submitted unquestioningly to her as she smoothed my hair, and arranged my dress and sent me downstairs. After that it is all a misty sort of dream; I danced and laughed with a gaiety that startled all who had seen the recent listlessness of my manner; I was daring, coquettish, brilliant; I hardly knew what words were on my lips, but they must have been light and merry, for the others laughed and whispered: "What would absent friends say to such high spirits!" and arch and coquettish I turned away to hide the pang their words awoke, and danced--danced till the last guest had gone and the tired musicians faltered at their task, and the weary members of the household eagerly turned to their own rooms. Once in mine, the unnatural tension of my nerves gave way; Kitty laid me on the bed, and for hours, I fancy, thought it an even chance whether I ever came out of that death-like swoon or not.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

"I lived on and on, As if my heart were kept beneath a gla.s.s And everybody stood, all eyes and ears, To see and hear it tick,"

E.B. BROWNING.

"Mr. Rutledge, sir!" exclaimed the captain, vehemently, bringing his hand down on the table with a force that made the gla.s.ses ring, "it's my opinion that there's a black mystery to be unravelled yet about that murder. It's my opinion that all our ears would tingle if we knew the truth. Certainly, in some inexplicable way, this place is connected with it. The man lurking about the grounds, the footprints across the garden-beds, the cravat found at the old summer-house--all seem to point out this neighborhood as his hiding-place."

"I cannot see that exactly, Captain McGuffy," returned his host. "I acknowledge that there is a mystery, and a dark one, yet to be cleared away from the matter; and that the murderer may have taken a temporary refuge in the woods near the house, is a possible, though not an infallible deduction to be drawn from the circ.u.mstances you have mentioned. The fact of garden-beds defaced with footprints on such a night as that of the masquerade, can hardly excite any surprise; and as to the suspicious-looking person lurking about the grounds all day, why, none of the three witnesses who swear to having seen him, can at all describe his appearance or occupation. A drunken loafer from the village sleeping off the effects of a night's carouse in the shelter of our woods, is a much more simple interpretation of it, to my mind."

The captain shook his head. "I cannot agree with you, sir; I cannot think that that cravat, blood-stained and soiled, was left in the summer-house by any village loafer. Village loafers, sir, do not, as a general thing, wear such cravats, nor stain them with anything darker than the drippings of their lager-bier."

"I know you'll all laugh at me,"' said Ellerton Wynkar, "but, absurd as it is, I can't help thinking I've seen that cravat worn by----. Good heavens! what's the matter now! Mrs. Churchill, your niece is going to faint!"

"Oh no!" said Grace, coolly pa.s.sing me a gla.s.s of water. "Only turning white and looking distractingly pretty, then rallying a little, and looking up and saying faintly, 'I'm better, thank you,' and regaining composure gradually and gracefully. That's the programme. We're quite used to it by this time. When I have a _fiance_ who must go to Europe, I shall be perfected in the art of graceful grief if I attend properly to the example I have now before me."

"There's one art you're not perfected in at all events," said Phil.

"What's that, bonnie Phil; what's that?"

"The art of feeling," said her cousin, shortly.

"Grace is thoughtless," said her mother, and entered into an apology so elaborate, that Phil was really distressed, and felt that he had been most unkind and unjust. He gave his hand to Grace, and said, with an honest smile:

"I didn't mean any reproach, Gracie, only you know you _are_ a tease!"

"But, sir," continued the captain, unable to relinquish the subject that most interested him, "do you really feel that everything has been done toward the clearing up of this mystery that lays within your power?

Don't you think that if some stronger measures were taken, some more detectives placed on the track, the thing might be ferreted out? It's aggravating to one's feelings to think that the villain may be within pistol shot of us, and get clear after all."

"It makes me so nervous," said Ella Wynkar, "I can't sleep at night, and Josephine makes Frances barricade the doors and windows as if we were preparing to stand a siege."

"It's truly horrible," said Josephine, with a shudder. "I wouldn't go half a dozen yards from the house alone for any consideration."

"Yes, Joseph, you are a coward, there's no denying it. Mr. Rutledge, what do you think of a girl of her age looking in all the closets, and even the bureau drawers, before she goes to bed at night, and making Frances sit beside her till she gets asleep?"

"I really think," said Mr. Rutledge, rising from the table, "that you are all alarming yourselves unnecessarily. Every precaution has been taken to insure the arrest of any suspicious person, and there is no danger of any abatement in the zeal and activity of our rustic police.

The woods and neighborhood are swarming with volunteer detectives, and till the offer of the reward is withdrawn, you may rest a.s.sured that their a.s.siduity will not be. I think the young ladies may omit the nightly barricading, and excuse Frances from mounting guard after eleven o'clock. I should not advise your walking very far from the house unattended, but beyond that, really, I think you need not take any trouble."

"And really _I_ think," muttered the captain, as we moved into the hall, "that he takes it very coolly. Upon my word, I didn't think he was the man to let such a thing as this be pa.s.sed over in such an indifferent way."

"G.o.d bless him for it!" I thought in my heart.

"Stephen is waiting at the door to speak with you, sir," said Thomas to his master. Stephen's face expressed such a volume of alarm and importance, that we involuntarily stopped in the hall, as he answered Mr. Rutledge's inquiry as to his errand.

"The body of a man, sir, has just been found in the lake. It has evidently been there a day or more. The men are down there, sir; I came immediately up to let you know."

Mr. Rutledge gave a hurried glance at me, as he said quickly:

"Possibly one of the laborers. I will go down with you at once."

Capt. McGuffy, with an I-told-you-so nod to Phil, s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat, and, followed by the other gentlemen, hurried with Stephen toward the lake.

The ladies, in a frightened group, cl.u.s.tered together on the lawn and watched them from a distance.

How well I could have told them who it was, and how long the bloated, disfigured corpse had lain floating among the reeds and alder-bushes at the head of the lake! How their ears, indeed, would tingle, if they should know the quarter part of what I knew. How sleepless and terrified Josephine's nights might well be, if she knew that a single foot of brick and mortar was all that separated her from the execrated murderer, with the horror of whose crime the country rang. How doubly aghast she would be, if she knew that the murderer was none other than the guest she had herself invited to Rutledge--the brilliant and clever man whose admiration she had vainly striven to obtain--the affianced husband of her cousin! What if they knew all this? What if my brain should give way under the pressure of this dreadful secret, and I should betray all!