On a certain bitter December evening, when the present century was several years younger than it is now, Miss Pengarvon, of Broome, in the shire of Derby, sat in the Green Parlor at the Hall, working by candle-light at some piece of delicate embroidery. The fingers of the old case-clock pointed to half-past ten--an exceptionally late hour in that remote place. Miss Pengarvon was alone. Her sister, Miss Letitia, had been suffering from neuralgic pains in the head, and had retired an hour ago. Barney Dale, the major-domo and, in point of fact, the only male member of the establishment, together with his wife, had gone into the village to visit a sick relative, and there was no knowing at what hour they might return. The solitary housemaid, having nothing to sit up for, had been glad to exchange the chilly gloom of the huge nagged kitchen for the comfort and warmth of bed. Earlier in the evening snow had fallen to the depth of two or three inches, but the sky was clear again by this time and the stars were glittering frostily. Except for the ticking of the clock and the occasional dropping of a cinder, silence the most profound reigned inside the Hall and out. Now and then Miss Pengarvon's needle would come to a stand for a moment while she snuffed the candles, after which the monotonous stitching would go on as before. Be it observed that candlesticks, tray, and snuffers were all of silver, although the candles themselves were of a cheap and common kind.
Miss Pengarvon was desirous of completing the work on which she was engaged before going to bed. Both she and Miss Letitia were remarkably skillful with their needles, and, gentlewomen though they were, were not above seeking payment for their work. But this was a secret known to themselves and Barney Dale alone. Once a month Barney went over to a certain town some score miles away, where he found a ready market for the proceeds of the untiring industry of the two ladies at the Hall, without anybody being the wiser as to whose handiwork it was. The money thus earned formed a welcome addition to the very limited income of Miss Pengarvon and her sister.
At this time Miss Pengarvon was close on her forty-fifth birthday. She was very tall, and grim, and gaunt. The normal expression of her features was harsh and forbidding. She had fine teeth, an aquiline nose, and unsympathetic blue-grey eyes, with a cold, stony gleam in them, deeply set under bushy brows--eyes which looked as though they had never melted with tenderness or softened with tears. The mass of her dark-brown hair, which began to show signs of the flight of time, was coiled round the crown of her head and held in its place by a high comb, while three small puffs or curls, which were generally kept in paper till mid-day, decorated each side of her forehead. When not engaged with her needle, she wore black lace mittens, and she always changed her morning dress of black bombazine for one of black silk before dinner. The dress she was wearing had been both dyed and turned, but was still good for two or three years' longer wear.
Of Miss Letitia it is enough to say that she was a copy, in somewhat less pronounced colors, of her sister as far as one human being can be a copy of any other; indeed, by comparative strangers, she was not infrequently mistaken for Miss Pengarvon. She was two years younger than her sister, whose stronger will dominated hers, and who had still as complete an ascendency over her as when they had been children together. It was noticeable that if any of the servants, or any poor person, wanted a favor granted, or a kindness done them, they went by preference to Miss Letitia rather than to Miss Barbara.
The Green Parlor, although it was traditionally supposed to be haunted, was the favorite sitting-room of the Misses Pengarvon, as it had been of their mother in her time. It was probably owing to the force of early associations that they clung to it as they did, seeing that there were many pleasanter rooms in the old house, some of them looking over the terrace and the garden beyond, or having views across miles of swelling moorland; whereas the two high, narrow windows of the Green Parlor looked into nothing more attractive than a small shaven lawn, shut in by a thick semicircular hedge of evergreens, and without any embellishment beyond such as might be afforded by a dilapidated and moss-grown sun-dial.
Both fingers and eyes were tired, but Miss Pengarvon went on doggedly with her work. She finished her task as the clock was striking eleven. With a sigh of relief she rose from her chair, and began to put away her silks and needles and other materials. While thus engaged she started suddenly; she felt nearly sure that she had heard a knocking at the front door. She waited without stirring for a couple of minutes. Yes, there it was again--the unmistakable sound of some one knocking at the great door of the Hall. Who could be seeking admittance at that late hour? The visitors at the Hall were so few that Miss Pengarvon was utterly nonplussed, Barney Dale and his wife, when they should return, would gain admittance through the back premises, of which they had the key. There might be thieves or tramps abroad, who knew that there was no one but women in the house.
But Miss Pengarvon was a woman of nerve, and not readily frightened. She was still waiting and hesitating when the knocking sounded for the third time, but less loudly than before. At the best it had been a timorous and half-hearted sort of summons, with little or no self-assertion about it.
Miss Pengarvon hesitated no longer. Taking up one of the two candlesticks, for there was no light in any other part of the house, she flung open the door of the Green Parlor and passed into the dark corridor beyond, shading the candle with her hand as she went. From the corridor she passed into the entrance-hall, strange, weird shadows seeming to start into life from wall and ceiling, as though they had been suddenly disturbed in their sleep, as she crossed it with her feeble light. Before her was the great door, iron clamped, and fastened with bolt and chain. Putting down her candle on a side table, Miss Pengarvon went up to the door and laid her hand on one of the bolts. Then she hesitated. She knew not who might be outside, and she was but one lonely woman. Then with a gesture of impatience at her own timidity, she undid the heavy bolts and locks one by one, but was careful to leave the guard chain still up. Then she pulled open the door as far as the chain would allow. A gust of frosty air, that cut almost like a knife, leaped suddenly in, bringing with it a shower of powdered snow and extinguishing the candle.
Miss Pengarvon, peering out into the snowy night, saw a female figure, hooded and cloaked from head to foot, standing on the topmost of the broad, shallow flight of steps which led up to the door. As she looked a dire presentiment shook her from head to foot, as few things else in the world could have shaken her, but her voice was clear and stern when she spoke:
"Who are you, and what is your business here at this untimely hour?" she demanded.
The figure outside came a step nearer.
"I am Isabel--your sister," was uttered in broken accents. "I have been walking till I can walk no longer. I have not tasted food since morning. I want shelter and rest for to-night--only for to-night."
The tone was one of pitiful supplication.
"Neither shelter nor rest is there under this roof for such as you," replied Miss Pengarvon, in her stoniest accents. "You have disgraced the name you bear as it was never disgraced before. This is your home no longer. Go!" and without another word the great door was shut with a crash and the bolts and locks shot one by one.
As Miss Pengarvon put out her hand in the dark to find the candlestick, one short, sharp, anguished cry--the cry of a broken heart--smote her ears. She stood for some moments with a hand pressed to her bosom, listening, but the silence was not broken again. Once more the house seemed a house of the dead. Then Miss Pengarvon turned and made her way through the black entrance-hall and the blacker corridor beyond, till she reached the parlor. Going in, she shut the door and tried to re-light the candle, but her hand trembled so that for some time she could not. Her face looked strangely haggard, but the hard, cold look in her eyes never varied. She drew a knitted shawl round her shoulders and sat down by the smouldering embers. Surely Barney and his wife could not be long now! She felt a strange disinclination for going to bed till they should return, although under ordinary circumstances she would have had no hesitation about doing so. The wind was beginning to rise, and every now and again there were eerie meanings in the wide chimney, while the windows shook and rattled as though some one were trying them from without. There was only one candle alight, and the room seemed full of shadows such as she had never noticed before. The darkest corner was the corner behind her chair. It made her uncomfortable to know this, so she crossed to the opposite side of the hearth, and sat down in her sister's chair. She wished that Letitia had not gone to bed.
She never remembered having felt so nervous before, not even when a child, and she despised herself for the feeling. All this time she was conscious that she was still listening intently. Would that timorous summons at the door make itself heard again? Perhaps she half hoped that it might. She kept telling herself again and again that it was impossible for her to have acted otherwise than as she had acted, that no other course was open to her--and yet she listened for the knocking to come again. By-and-bye she opened the door a little way. This, as she told herself, was only that she might be enabled to hear Barney when he should arrive. How slowly the minutes passed! What strange noises the wind made! Those windows must be seen to in the morning and made to fit more tightly in their frames. It was evident that she would not be troubled with the knocking again. "So much the better--so much the better," she muttered under her breath--and yet she was listening all the time. Thank Heaven! here was Barney Dale at last.
She could hear him unlocking one of the back doors of which he had taken the key with him. But he did not re-lock the door, which was strange; and now he was coming at a great pace in the direction of the Green Parlor; his hobnailed shoes clumping noisily as he came along the stone corridor. He had never before missed giving a preliminary knock at the door, but this time he came in without ceremony. One glance at his affrighted face was enough to tell Miss Pengarvon the news he was bringing her. She rose from her seat as he entered the room.
"Oh! mistress, there's poor Miss Isabel lying outside in the snow, and----"
Miss Pengarvon's tall, thin form drew itself up to its fullest height. "I know it," she said in her deep, harsh tones; "I know it. Let her lie there, or let her go. There is no home for such as she."
"But, mistress, she's dying; or, mebbe, dead already--dead and cold. I lifted up her head, and it fell back like a lump o' lead. You munna leave her lying there to perish. For heaven's sake, mistress, let me and Joanna see to her!"
"Let her go. This is no home for such as she," was all that Miss Pengarvon said.
"But she canna even stand, and, long afore morning, she'll be froze to death. Besides, which----" he bent forward, and whispered a few words in Miss Pengarvon's ear.
A sort of stony horror came into her face as she listened. Then she drew back a pace and clenched her hand, and for a moment Barney thought that she was about to strike him. "It is a lie--an infamous lie!" she whispered back through her thin, dry lips.
"It's gospel truth, mistress, and Joanna will tell you the same. You munna leave her lying there, dead an' cold, poor dear--dead an' cold."
"So be it," said Miss Pengarvon, after a few moments, with an evident effort. "Do you and Joanna bring her in--but not by the front door, not over the threshold she has disgraced. Let her come in by the door at which beggars and vagrants knock."
Barney waited for no further permission, but went at once, closing the door behind him. Miss Pengarvon folded her shawl more closely around her and sank into a chair. She sat and stared at the dying embers, her thin lips moving, but no sound coming from them. All the same, her ears were painfully on the alert. She started as though she half expected to see a ghost, when the door slowly opened, and Miss Letitia entered the room in her grey dressing-robe and frilled night-cap. The latter was trembling violently, and her eyes were full of terror.
"What brings you here?" demanded the elder sister, sternly. "I thought you were in bed hours ago."
"I left the lotion for my face downstairs, and I can get no rest without it. But what are Barney and Joanna about at this time of night? As I came downstairs I saw them bringing something in through the open door." Then she whispered, "Do you know, Barbara, it looked for all the world like a corpse!"
Miss Pengarvon shuddered in spite of herself. "Letitia," she said, "go and bolt the door at the foot of the staircase that leads to Susan's bedroom. She might come down unawares, as you have. When you have done that, come back here, and I will tell you what it was that you saw Barney and Joanna bringing into the house."