in which harriet fabos continues her narrative.
ean, i remember, had come in from a little trip to cambridge about five o’clock in the afternoon. we had tea together, and afterwards he called his servant, okyada, to the study, and they were closeted there almost until dinner time. in the drawing-room later on, ean proved to be in the brightest of spirits. he spoke, among other things, of some of his deserted hobbies, and expressed regret that he had given up his yacht.
“i’m getting old before my time, harriet,” he said. “the pantaloon and slippered stage is a tragedy for thirty-three. i think i shall get another boat, sister. if you are good, i will take you to the adriatic again.”
i promised to be very good; and then, laughing together, we chatted of the old days in greece and turkey, of our voyages to south america, and of sunny days in spain. i had never seen him brighter. when we went to bed he kissed me twice, and then said such an extraordinary thing that i could not help but remember it:
“okyada and i will be working late in the observatory,” he said; “there may be one or two men about assisting us. don’t be afraid if you hear a noise, harriet. you will know it’s all right, and that i am aware of it.”
now, ean is so very frank with me usually, looks me so straight in the face, and tells me so plainly what he means, that his evident attempt to conceal something from me upon this occasion, his averted gaze and forced manner, could not but awake my just curiosity. i did not press him at the moment, but in my own room i thought much upon it all, and was quite unable to sleep. books were of no help to me, nor did my habitual self-composure help me. recalling his words, and trying to fit a meaning to them, i went more than once to my window and looked out over the pleasure garden beneath it. deepdene, as many know, is an old tudor mansion with three sides of its ancient quadrangle still standing. my own rooms are in the right-hand wing; the pleasure garden is below them, and beyond its high wall is the open park which rims right down to the bury road. let me ask anyone what my feelings should have been, when chancing to look out over the garden at one o’clock that morning i saw, as plainly as my eyes have ever seen, the figures of three men crouching beneath the wall and evidently as fearful of discovery as i was of their presence.
my first impulse, naturally, was to wake ean and to let him know what i had seen. no very courageous person at the best, i have always been greatly afraid of the presence of strange men about the house, and this visitation at such an hour would surely have alarmed the bravest. as if to magnify my fears, there was the light of our observatory shining brightly across the park to tell me plainly that my brother was still at work, and that the invaluable okyada must be with him. my maid, humphreys, and the poor old butler, williams, were my only janissaries, and what could one hope for from them in such an emergency? i began to say that if the men succeeded in entering the house, the peril were grave indeed; and then, upon this, i recollected ean’s warning, and tried to take comfort of it. had he not said that there might be men about the house assisting him? why, then, should i be afraid? i will tell you—because it came to me suddenly that he must have been aware of a probable attack upon the manor, and had wished to prepare me for anything the night could bring forth. there was no other reasonable explanation.
judge, then, in what a dilemma i found myself. my brother away at the observatory, half a mile at least from the manor; two old servants for my body-guard; a lonely house and strange men seeking to enter it. driven this way and that by my thoughts, at first i said that i would take ean at his word, and hide away from it all like a true coward in my bed. this i would have done if the doing of it had not been unsupportable. i could not lie. my heart was beating so; every sound so distressed me, that i arose in desperation, and putting on my dressing gown with trembling fingers, determined to wake up my maid humphreys; for, said i, she cannot be more afraid than i am. not an over-bold resolution at the best, the execution of it would never have been attempted had i known what was in store for me. shall i ever forget it, if i live a hundred years? the dark landing when i opened my bedroom door! the staircase with the great stained window and the moonlight shining down through it! these could not affright me. it was the whisper of voices i heard below, the soft tread of feet upon velvet-pile. ah! those were sounds i shall ever remember!
the men had entered the house; they were coming upstairs. if i crossed the dark landing to my maid’s room, assuredly i should alarm them. these were the reflections as i stood simply paralysed with fright and unable to utter a single cry or to move from the place. step by step i heard the thieves creeping up the stairs until at last i could see them in the bay of the entresol and tell myself, in truth, that i was not dreaming. then i do believe that i half swooned with terror.
they were coming up step by step to visit and to rob my brother’s safe, kept in the dressing-room, where the japanese, okyada, usually slept. this much even my agitated mind impressed upon me. a terrified woman fearing discovery as something which might bring these men’s vengeance upon her, yet for all the gold in the world i could not have uttered a single cry. a sense of utter dread robbed me of all power of will and speech. i could hear my heart beating so that i thought even they must hear it as they passed me by. and you shall imagine my feelings when i say that the rays from the dark lanterns they carried were turned upon the very door of my bedroom which i had but just shut behind me.
had they been diverted a hair’s-breadth to the right, they would have discovered me, standing with my back to the wall, a helpless and, i do protest, a pitiable figure. but the robbers were too set upon the jewels to delay for any such unlikely chance, and they went straight on to my brother’s room; and entering it, to my surprise, without difficulty, i heard them shut the door and lock it behind them.
so there i stood, my limbs still trembling, but the spell of immediate fear already a little removed from me. dreading discovery no longer, i crossed the landing silently and entered my maid’s room. a courageous woman, far braver than her mistress—for she is of irish descent, and does not know what the meaning of fear is—she heard me with as little concern as if i had been ordering her to go shopping into cambridge.
“the master’s away in the park,” she said; “then we must fetch him, mistress. i’ll go myself. do you wait here with me until i am dressed.”
i dreaded being left, and made no scruple to tell her so.
“why, that’s all right,” she exclaimed, quite cheerily. “i’ll go and call williams. they’ll be off fast enough, mistress, if they get the diamonds. now, do you just sit here quietly, and think nothing at all about it. i’ll be there and back like master’s motor-car. sure, the impudence of them—to come to this house of all places in the world! they’ll be robbing buckingham palace next!”
she was dressing the while she spoke, and being ready almost immediately, she put a shawl about her shoulders, and made to set off through the park. when she had gone i locked the door—coward that i was—and sat all alone in the darkness, praying for my brother’s coming. indeed, i think that i counted the minutes, and had come to the belief that humphreys had been gone a quarter of an hour—though i make sure now that it was not truly more than five minutes—when a terrible cry, something so inhuman, so dreadful, as to be beyond all my experience, rang out through the house, and was repeated again and again until the very night seemed to echo it.
what had happened? had my brother returned, then? was it his voice i had heard? not for a hundred thousand pounds could i have remained any longer in that dark room with these dreadful questions for my company—and, unlocking the door, i ran out to the landing, calling “ean! ean! for god’s sake tell me what has happened!”
he answered me at once, my dear brother, standing at the door of his dressing-room, just, as it seemed to me, as unconcerned as though he had been called up at daybreak to go out with his dogs and gun. quick as he was, however, i had peeped into the room behind him, and then i saw something which even his cleverness could not hide from me. a man lay full length upon the floor, apparently dead. by his side there knelt the japanese, okyada, who chafed the limbs of the sufferer and tried to restore him to consciousness. this sight, i say, ean could not conceal from me. but he shut the door at once, and, leading me away, he tried to tell me what it was.
“my dear harriet, you see what comes of touching scientific implements. here’s a man who wanted to look inside my safe. he quite forgot that the door of it is connected up to a very powerful electric current. don’t be alarmed, but go back to your bed. did i not tell you that there would be strange men about?”
“ean,” i said, “for pity’s sake let me know the truth. there were three men altogether. i saw them in the garden; they passed me on the stairs. they were robbers, ean; you cannot hide it from me.”
“you poor little harriet,” he said, kissing me. “of course they were robbers. i have been expecting them for a week or more. did i tell you i should be in the observatory? that was foolish of me.”
“but there was a light there, dear.”
“ah, yes; i wished my guests to think me star-gazing. two of them are now returning to london as fast as their motor-car can carry them. the other will remain with us to recuperate. go back to bed, harriet, and tell yourself that all is as well as it could be.”
“ean,” i said, “you are hiding something from me.”
“my dear sister,” he replied, “does a man in the dark hide anything from anybody? when i know, you shall be the first to hear. believe me, this is no common burglary, or i would have acted very differently. there are deep secrets; i may have to leave you to search for them.”
his words astonished me very much. my own agitation could not measure his recollection or the unconcern which the strange episodes of the night had left to him. for my part, i could but pass long hours of meditation, in which i tried to gather up the tangled skein of this surpassing mystery. when morning came, my brother had left the house and okyada with him. i have never seen him since that day, and his letters have told me little. he is upon a ship, well and happy, he says, and that ship is his own. his voyages have taken him to many ports, but he is not yet able to say when he will return.
“be assured, dear sister,” he writes, “that the work to which i have set my hand would be approved by you, and that by god’s help i shall accomplish it. more i am unable to commit to writing for prudent reasons. you will keep the guards at the manor until i am home, and my valuables will remain at the bank. fear nothing, then, for yourself. the fellows who honoured us with their company—two of them, i should say—are now in south africa. the third, who was a gentleman and may again become a man, is now on board this yacht. if he continues to behave himself, a farm in canada and a little capital will be his reward. it is not the instruments but their makers whom i seek; and when they are found, then, dear harriet, will we enjoy halcyon days together.”
to these words he added others, speaking of more private matters and those which were of concern but to him and to me. by the “guards” he meant an ex-sergeant-major and two old soldiers whom he had engaged upon his departure to watch the house in his absence. for myself, however, i was no longer afraid. perhaps my unrest had been less if ean had been altogether frank with me; but his vague intimation, the knowledge that he was far from me, and the inseparable instinct of his danger, contributed alike to my foreboding.
that these were not without reason subsequent events have fully justified. i have heard of his yacht as being in the south atlantic. there have been rare letters from him, but none that says what secret it is which keeps him away from me. and for a whole month now i have received no letter at all. that other friends, unknown to me personally but staunch to my dear brother, put the worst construction upon his silence, the recent paragraph in the london newspapers makes very clear. what can a helpless woman do that these true friends are not doing? she can but pray to the almighty for the safety of one very dear to her—nay, all that she has to live and hope for in this world of sorrow and affliction.
