The Queen of Hearts

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I had wit enough to let the smoldering go on for a moment or two
more, and to pour the whole of my canful of water over the fire
before the third stone came down the chimney. The live embers on
the floor I easily disposed of after that. The man on the roof
must have heard the hissing of the fire as I put it out, and have
felt the change produced in the air at the mouth of the chimney,
for after the third stone had descended no more followed it. As
for either of the ruffians themselves dropping down by the same
road along which the stones had come, that was not to be dreaded.
The chimney, as I well knew by our experience in cleaning it, was
too narrow to give passage to any one above the size of a small
boy.

I looked upward as that comforting reflection crossed my mind--I
looked up, and saw, as plainly as I see the paper I am now
writing on, the point of a knife coming through the inside of the
roof just over my head. Our cottage had no upper story, and our
rooms had no ceilings. Slowly and wickedly the knife wriggled its
way through the dry inside thatch between the rafters. It stopped
for a while, and there came a sound of tearing. That, in its
turn, stopped too; there was a great fall of dry thatch on the
floor; and I saw the heavy, hairy hand of Shifty Dick, armed with
the knife, come through after the fallen fragments. He tapped at
the rafters with the back of the knife, as if to test their
strength. Thank God, they were substantial and close together!
Nothing lighter than a hatchet would have sufficed to remove any
part of them.

The murderous hand was still tapping with the knife when I heard
a shout from the man Jerry, coming from the neighborhood of my
father's stone-shed in the back yard. The hand and knife
disappeared instantly. I went to the back door and put my ear to
it, and listened.

Both men were now in the shed. I made the most desperate efforts
to call to mind what tools and other things were left in it which
might be used against me. But my agitation confused me. I could
remember nothing except my father's big stone-saw, which was far
too heavy and unwieldy to be used on the roof of the cottage. I
was still puzzling my brains, and making my head swim to no
purpose, when I heard the men dragging something out of the shed.
At the same instant that the noise caught my ear, the remembrance
flashed across me like lightning of some beams of wood which had
lain in the shed for years past. I had hardly time to feel
certain that they were removing one of these beams before I heard
Shifty Dick say to Jerry.

"Which door?"

"The front," was the answer. "We've cracked it already; we'll
have it down now in no time."

Senses less sharpened by danger than mine would have understood
but too easily, from these words, that they were about to use the
beam as a battering-ram against the door. When that conviction
overcame me, I lost courage at last. I felt that the door must
come down. No such barricade as I had constructed could support
it for more than a few minutes against such shocks as it was now
to receive.

"I can do no more to keep the house against them," I said to
myself, with my knees knocking together, and the tears at last
beginning to wet my cheeks. "I must trust to the night and the
thick darkness, and save my life by running for it while there is
yet time."

I huddled on my cloak and hood, and had my hand on the bar of the
back door, when a piteous mew from the bedroom reminded me of the
existence of poor Pussy. I ran in, and huddled the creature up in
my apron. Before I was out in the passage again, the first shock
from the beam fell on the door.

The upper hinge gave way. The chairs and coal-scuttle, forming
the top of my barricade, were hurled, rattling, on to the floor,
but the lower hinge of the door, and the chest of drawers and the
tool-chest still kept their places.

"One more!" I heard the villains cry--"one more run with the
beam, and down it comes!"

Just as they must have been starting for that "one more run," I
opened the back door and fled into the night, with the bookful of
banknotes in my bosom, the silver spoons in my pocket, and the
cat in my arms. I threaded my way easily enough through the
familiar obstacles in the backyard, and was out in the pitch
darkness of the moor before I heard the second shock, and the
crash which told me that the whole door had given way.

In a few minutes they must have discovered the fact of my flight
with the pocketbook, for I heard shouts in the distance as if
they were running out to pursue me. I kept on at the top of my
speed, and the noise soon died away. It was so dark that twenty
thieves instead of two would have found it useless to follow me.

How long it was before I reached the farmhouse--the nearest place
to which I could fly for refuge--I cannot tell you. I remember
that I had just sense enough to keep the wind at my back (having
observed in the beginning of the evening that it blew toward Moor
Farm), and to go on resolutely through the darkness. In all other
respects I was by this time half crazed by what I had gone
through. If it had so happened that the wind had changed after I
had observed its direction early in the evening, I should have
gone astray, and have probably perished of fatigue and exposure
on the moor. Providentially, it still blew steadily as it had
blown for hours past, and I reached the farmhouse with my clothes
wet through, and my brain in a high fever. When I made my alarm
at the door, they had all gone to bed but the farmer's eldest
son, who was sitting up late over his pipe and newspaper. I just
mustered strength enough to gasp out a few words, telling him
what was the matter, and then fell down at his feet, for the
first time in my life in a dead swoon.

That swoon was followed by a severe illness. When I got strong
enough to look about me again, I found myself in one of the
farmhouse beds--my father, Mrs. Knifton, and the doctor were all
in the room--my cat was asleep at my feet, and the pocketbook
that I had saved lay on the table by my side.

There was plenty of news for me to hear as soon as I was fit to
listen to it. Shifty Dick and the other rascal had been caught,
and were in prison, waiting their trial at the next assizes. Mr.
and Mrs. Knifton had been so shocked at the danger I had run--for
which they blamed their own want of thoughtfulness in leaving the
pocketbook in my care--that they had insisted on my father's
removing from our lonely home to a cottage on their land, which
we were to inhabit rent free. The bank-notes that I had saved
were given to me to buy furniture with, in place of the things
that the thieves had broken. These pleasant tidings assisted so
greatly in promoting my recovery, that I was soon able to relate
to my friends at the farmhouse the particulars that I have
written here. They were all surprised and interested, but no one,
as I thought, listened to me with such breathless attention as
the farmer's eldest son. Mrs. Knifton noticed this too, and began
to make jokes about it, in her light-hearted way, as soon as we
were alone. I thought little of her jesting at the time; but when
I got well, and we went to live at our new home, "the young
farmer," as he was called in our parts, constantly came to see
us, and constantly managed to meet me out of doors. I had my
share of vanity, like other young women, and I began to think of
Mrs. Knifton's jokes with some attention. To be brief, the young
farmer managed one Sunday--I never could tell how--to lose his
way with me in returning from church, and before we found out the
right road home again he had asked me to be his wife.

His relations did all they could to keep us asunder and break off
the match, thinking a poor stonemason's daughter no fit wife for
a prosperous yeoman. But the farmer was too obstinate for them.
He had one form of answer to all their objections. "A man, if he
is worth the name, marries according to his own notions, and to
please himself," he used to say. "My notion is, that when I take
a wife I am placing my character and my happiness--the most
precious things I have to trust--in one woman's care. The woman I
mean to marry had a small charge confided to her care, and showed
herself worthy of it at the risk of her life. That is proof
enough for me that she is worthy of the greatest charge I can put
into her hands. Rank and riches are fine things, but the
certainty of getting a good wife is something better still. I'm
of age, I know my own mind, and I mean to marry the stone-mason's
daughter."

And he did marry me. Whether I proved myself worthy or not of his
good opinion is a question which I must leave you to ask my
husband. All that I had to relate about myself and my doings is
now told. Whatever interest my perilous adventure may excite,
ends, I am well aware, with my escape to the farmhouse. I have
only ventured on writing these few additional sentences because
my marriage is the moral of my story. It has brought me the
choicest blessings of happiness and prosperity, and I owe them
all to my night-adventure in _The Black Cottage_.

THE SECOND DAY.

A CLEAR, cloudless, bracing autumn morning. I rose gayly, with
the pleasant conviction on my mind that our experiment had thus
far been successful beyond our hopes.

Short and slight as the first story had been, the result of it on
Jessie's mind had proved conclusive. Before I could put the
question to her, she declared of her own accord, and with her
customary exaggeration, that she had definitely abandoned all
idea of writing to her aunt until our collection of narratives
was exhausted.

"I am in a fever of curiosity about what is to come," she said,
when we all parted for the night; "and, even if I wanted to leave
you, I could not possibly go away now, without hearing the
stories to the end."

So far, so good. All my anxieties from this time were for
George's return. Again to-day I searched the newspapers, and
again there were no tidings of the ship.

Miss Jessie occupied the second day by a drive to our county town
to make some little purchases. Owen, and Morgan, and I were all
hard at work, during her absence, on the stories that still
remained to be completed. Owen desponded about ever getting done;
Morgan grumbled at what he called the absurd difficulty of
writing nonsense. I worked on smoothly and contentedly,
stimulated by the success of the first night.

We assembled as before in our guest's sitting-room. As the clock
struck eight she drew out the second card. It was Number Two. The
lot had fallen on me to read next.

"Although my story is told in the first person," I said,
addressing Jessie, "you must not suppose that the events related
in this particular case happened to me. They happened to a friend
of mine, who naturally described them to me from his own personal
point of view. In producing my narrative from the recollection of
what he told me some years since, I have supposed myself to be
listening to him again, and have therefore written in his
character, and, w henever my memory would help me, as nearly as
possible in his language also. By this means I hope I have
succeeded in giving an air of reality to a story which has truth,
at any rate, to recommend it. I must ask you to excuse me if I
enter into no details in offering this short explanation.
Although the persons concerned in my narrative have ceased to
exist, it is necessary to observe all due delicacy toward their
memories. Who they were, and how I became acquainted with them,
are matters of no moment. The interest of the story, such as it
is, stands in no need, in this instance, of any assistance from
personal explanations."

With those words I addressed myself to my task, and read as
follows:

BROTHER GRIFFITH'S STORY

of

THE FAMILY SECRET.

CHAPTER I.

WAS it an Englishman or a Frenchman who first remarked that every
family had a skeleton in its cupboard? I am not learned enough to
know, but I reverence the observation, whoever made it. It speaks
a startling truth through an appropriately grim metaphor--a truth
which I have discovered by practical experience. Our family had a
skeleton in the cupboard, and the name of it was Uncle George.

I arrived at the knowledge that this skeleton existed, and I
traced it to the particular cupboard in which it was hidden, by
slow degrees. I was a child when I first began to suspect that
there was such a thing, and a grown man when I at last discovered
that my suspicions were true.

My father was a doctor, having an excellent practice in a large
country town. I have heard that he married against the wishes of
his family. They could not object to my mother on the score of
birth, breeding, or character--they only disliked her heartily.
My grandfather, grandmother, uncles, and aunts all declared that
she was a heartless, deceitful woman; all disliked her manners,
her opinions, and even the expression of her face--all, with the
exception of my father's youngest brother, George.

George was the unlucky member of our family. The rest were all
clever; he was slow in capacity. The rest were all remarkably
handsome; he was the sort of man that no woman ever looks at
twice. The rest succeeded in life; he failed. His profession was
the same as my father's, but he never got on when he started in
practice for himself. The sick poor, who could not choose,
employed him, and liked him. The sick rich, who could--especially
the ladies--declined to call him in when they could get anybody
else. In experience he gained greatly by his profession; in money
and reputation he gained nothing.

There are very few of us, however dull and unattractive we may be
to outward appearance, who have not some strong passion, some
germ of what is called romance, hidden more or less deeply in our
natures. All the passion and romance in the nature of my Uncle
George lay in his love and admiration for my father.

He sincerely worshipped his eldest brother as one of the noblest
of human beings. When my father was engaged to be married, and
when the rest of the family, as I have already mentioned, did not
hesitate to express their unfavorable opinion of the disposition
of his chosen wife, Uncle George, who had never ventured on
differing with anyone before, to the amazement of everybody,
undertook the defense of his future sister-in-law in the most
vehement and positive manner. In his estimation, his brother's
choice was something sacred and indisputable. The lady might, and
did, treat him with unconcealed contempt, laugh at his
awkwardness, grow impatient at his stammering--it made no
difference to Uncle George. She was to be his brother's wife,
and, in virtue of that one great fact, she became, in the
estimation of the poor surgeon, a very queen, who, by the laws of
the domestic constitution, could do no wrong.

When my father had been married a little while, he took his
youngest brother to live with him as his assistant.

If Uncle George had been made president of the College of
Surgeons, he could not have been prouder and happier than he was
in his new position. I am afraid my father never understood the
depth of his brother's affection for him. All the hard work fell
to George's share: the long journeys at night, the physicking of
wearisome poor people, the drunken cases, the revolting
cases--all the drudging, dirty business of the surgery, in short,
was turned over to him; and day after day, month after month, he
struggled through it without a murmur. When his brother and his
sister-in-law went out to dine with the county gentry, it never
entered his head to feel disappointed at being left unnoticed at
home. When the return dinners were given, and he was asked to
come in at tea-time, and left to sit unregarded in a corner, it
never occurred to him to imagine that he was treated with any
want of consideration or respect. He was part of the furniture of
the house, and it was the business as well as the pleasure of his
life to turn himself to any use to which his brother might please
to put him.

So much for what I have heard from others on the subject of my
Uncle George. My own personal experience of him is limited to
what I remember as a mere child. Let me say something, however,
first about my parents, my sister and myself.

My sister was the eldest born and the best loved. I did not come
into the world till four years after her birth, and no other
child followed me. Caroline, from her earliest days, was the
perfection of beauty and health. I was small, weakly, and, if the
truth must be told, almost as plain-featured as Uncle George
himself. It would be ungracious and undutiful in me to presume to
decide whether there was any foundation or not for the dislike
that my father's family always felt for my mother. All I can
venture to say is, that her children never had any cause to
complain of her.

Her passionate affection for my sister, her pride in the child's
beauty, I remember well, as also her uniform kindness and
indulgence toward me. My personal defects must have been a sore
trial to her in secret, but neither she nor my father ever showed
me that they perceived any difference between Caroline and
myself. When presents were made to my sister, presents were made
to me. When my father and mother caught my sister up in their
arms and kissed her they scrupulously gave me my turn afterward.
My childish instinct told me that there was a difference in their
smiles when they looked at me and looked at her; that the kisses
given to Caroline were warmer than the kisses given to me; that
the hands which dried her tears in our childish griefs, touched
her more gently than the hands which dried mine. But these, and
other small signs of preference like them, were such as no
parents could be expected to control. I noticed them at the time
rather with wonder than with repining. I recall them now without
a harsh thought either toward my father or my mother. Both loved
me, and both did their duty by me. If I seem to speak
constrainedly of them here, it is not on my own account. I can
honestly say that, with all my heart and soul.

Even Uncle George, fond as he was of me, was fonder of my
beautiful child-sister.

When I used mischievously to pull at his lank, scanty hair, he
would gently and laughingly take it out of my hands, but he would
let Caroline tug at it till his dim, wandering gray eyes winked
and watered again with pain. He used to plunge perilously about
the garden, in awkward imitation of the cantering of a horse,
while I sat on his shoulders; but he would never proceed at any
pace beyond a slow and safe walk when Caroline had a ride in her
turn. When he took us out walking, Caroline was always on the
side next the wall. When we interrupted him over his dirty work
in the surgery, he used to tell me to go and play until he was
ready for me; but he would put down his bottles, and clean his
clumsy fingers on his coarse apron, and lead Caroline out again,
as if she had been the greatest lady in the land. Ah! how he
loved her! and, let me be honest and grateful, and add, how he
loved me, too!

When I was eight years old and Caroline was twelve, I was
separated from home for some time. I had been ailing for many
months previously; had got ben efit from being taken to the
sea-side, and had shown symptoms of relapsing on being brought
home again to the midland county in which we resided. After much
consultation, it was at last resolved that I should be sent to
live, until my constitution got stronger, with a maiden sister of
my mother's, who had a house at a watering-place on the south
coast.

I left home, I remember, loaded with presents, rejoicing over the
prospect of looking at the sea again, as careless of the future
and as happy in the present as any boy could be. Uncle George
petitioned for a holiday to take me to the seaside, but he could
not be spared from the surgery. He consoled himself and me by
promising to make me a magnificent model of a ship.

I have that model before my eyes now while I write. It is dusty
with age; the paint on it is cracked; the ropes are tangled; the
sails are moth-eaten and yellow. The hull is all out of
proportion, and the rig has been smiled at by every nautical
friend of mine who has ever looked at it. Yet, worn-out and
faulty as it is--inferior to the cheapest miniature vessel
nowadays in any toy-shop window--I hardly know a possession of
mine in this world that I would not sooner part with than Uncle
George's ship.

My life at the sea-side was a very happy one. I remained with my
aunt more than a year. My mother often came to see how I was
going on, and at first always brought my sister with her; but
during the last eight months of my stay Caroline never once
appeared. I noticed also, at the same period, a change in my
mother's manner. She looked paler and more anxious at each
succeeding visit, and always had long conferences in private with
my aunt. At last she ceased to come and see us altogether, and
only wrote to know how my health was getting on. My father, too,
who had at the earlier periods of my absence from home traveled
to the sea-side to watch the progress of my recovery as often as
his professional engagements would permit, now kept away like my
mother. Even Uncle George, who had never been allowed a holiday
to come and see me, but who had hitherto often written and begged
me to write to him, broke off our correspondence.

I was naturally perplexed and amazed by these changes, and
persecuted my aunt to tell me the reason of them. At first she
tried to put me off with excuses; then she admitted that there
was trouble in our house; and finally she confessed that the
trouble was caused by the illness of my sister. When I inquired
what that illness was, my aunt said it was useless to attempt to
explain it to me. I next applied to the servants. One of them was
less cautious than my aunt, and answered my question, but in
terms that I could not comprehend. After much explanation, I was
made to understand that "something was growing on my sister's
neck that would spoil her beauty forever, and perhaps kill her,
if it could not be got rid of." How well I remember the shudder
of horror that ran through me at the vague idea of this deadly
"something"! A fearful, awe-struck curiosity to see what
Caroline's illness was with my own eyes troubled my inmost heart,
and I begged to be allowed to go home and help to nurse her. The
request was, it is almost needless to say, refused.

Weeks passed away, and still I heard nothing, except that my
sister continued to be ill. One day I privately wrote a letter to
Uncle George, asking him, in my childish way, to come and tell me
about Caroline's illness.

I knew where the post-office was, and slipped out in the morning
unobserved and dropped my letter in the box. I stole home again
by the garden, and climbed in at the window of a back parlor on
the ground floor. The room above was my aunt's bedchamber, and
the moment I was inside the house I heard moans and loud
convulsive sobs proceeding from it. My aunt was a singularly
quiet, composed woman. I could not imagine that the loud sobbing
and moaning came from her, and I ran down terrified into the
kitchen to ask the servants who was crying so violently in my
aunt's room.

I found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers
with serious faces. They started when they saw me as if I had
been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.

"He's too young to feel it much," I heard one say to the other.
"So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it
happened no later."

In a few minutes they had told me the worst. It was indeed my
aunt who had been crying in the bedroom. Caroline was dead.

I felt the blow more severely than the servants or anyone else
about me supposed. Still I was a child in years, and I had the
blessed elasticity of a child's nature. If I had been older I
might have been too much absorbed in grief to observe my aunt so
closely as I did, when she was composed enough to see me later in
the day.

I was not surprised by the swollen state of her eyes, the
paleness of her cheeks, or the fresh burst of tears that came
from her when she took me in her arms at meeting. But I was both
amazed and perplexed by the look of terror that I detected in her
face. It was natural enough that she should grieve and weep over
my sister's death, but why should she have that frightened look
as if some other catastrophe had happened?

I asked if there was any more dreadful news from home besides the
news of Caroline's death.

My aunt, said No in a strange, stifled voice, and suddenly turned
her face from me. Was my father dead? No. My mother? No. Uncle
George? My aunt trembled all over as she said No to that also,
and bade me cease asking any more questions. She was not fit to
bear them yet she said, and signed to the servant to lead me out
of the room.

The next day I was told that I was to go home after the funeral,
and was taken out toward evening by the housemaid, partly for a
walk, partly to be measured for my mourning clothes. After we had
left the tailor's, I persuaded the girl to extend our walk for
some distance along the sea-beach, telling her, as we went, every
little anecdote connected with my lost sister that came tenderly
back to my memory in those first days of sorrow. She was so
interested in hearing and I in speaking that we let the sun go
down before we thought of turning back.

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