LEFT ALONE IN THE HOUSE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 7, 13 February 1892, Page 164

LEFT ALONE IN THE HOUSE.

... __T was the fifth day of W/ November— * Guy Fawkes a Day ’ in the old English S calendar that hung above I the mantel in my maternal I grandmother’s long-dis-a used room upstairs. In ■ this northern home to which we had recently reJ moved, falling heirs to it through that very ancestress's will, thedwellers regarded November rather as a winter than an autumn month, and to-day the wind howled and the rain pattered with a persistency marvellous to behold. And, as it happened, I was all alone in the bouse. Father had gone to take his russet apples to market—the apples that I myself had helped to harvest and pack into the barrels—and was not expected home until to-morrow night at the earliest. Jack, my brother, was in town, fitting up the law oilice which was henceforward to be his abode. Jean, our hard-featured, cross-grained old servant, had gone home with the ‘ rheumatics,’ as she termed it, to be treated by a certain ancient herb doctor; and just at dusk Peter, our ‘ useful man,’ had thrust his shock head unceremoniously in at the door.

‘ I say, Miss Ruth,’ he had said, ‘ there’s plenty of wood, and everything’s all snug for the night, and I’m goin’ over to Stephenson’s. They’re in trouble there.’ • Trouble, Peter ? What kind of trouble ? Is the old man sick ?’

But in answer to my query Peter only uttered an indistinct remark and went out, slamming the door behind him. I stood in front of the fire, looking down at the glowing embers, and pondering within myself. The Stephensons, who lived in an old grey-stone house on the other side of the precipitous glen had always been a riddle to me. The family was small, consisting only of a crabbed old man, his portentously silent wife, and two tall, ungainly sons ; and what on earth they did with all the big, echoing rooms, or how they contrived to live, perched like eaglets on the side of the rock, I could not form the least idea. * City boarders,’ Peter had once grunted out in answer to my persistent interrogations. But if they kept city boarders, why did they not leave these dreary mountain fastnesses when the leaves •fell and the dismal autumn fogs gathered above the cliffs? Altogether, there was a certain atmosphere of mystery about these ‘ Stephensons ’ that aroused all the Eve-like instincts of my nature. While I still stood thinking, a soft tap sounded at the ■door. 1 opened it at once, never once remembering that I was alone in the house. ‘ Ye never oughter’d do that, Miss Ruth,’ said the wellknown accents of Mrs Gludge, Farmer Gludge’s buxom wife. ‘ Do what, Mrs Gludge?’ ‘ Open the door arter dark, when you are alone in the house, without askin’ who’s there.’ ‘ How did you know I was alone in the house ?’ ‘ I just met Peter goin’ to Stephenson’s.’ ‘Oh !’ said I. ‘ But we don’t have tramps around here, Mrs Gludge.’ ‘ I’m not so certain o’ that,’ said the farmer’s wife. * Your folks hain’t lived here as long as I have. We’re just nigh enough to the road to have queer characters prowlin’ about when ye least expect ’em. And then there’s Stephenson’s.’ ‘What of Stephenson’s';’ I cried, eagerly. ‘Who is Stephenson, anyway? Do tell me Mrs Gludge.' ‘ Well, I declare!’ said Mrs Gludge. ‘ Is it possible, now, that they hain’t told you?’ ‘ They have told me nothing,' said I. ‘ Well, it’s likely they didn’t want to scare you or make you nervous,’ said Mrs Gludge. ‘ But, all the same, I think you’d oughter know.’ ‘ Mrs Gludge,’ cried I seizing her arm, ‘ what is it ? Do tell me !’ ‘ It’s a Private Home,’ said Mrs Gludge, lowering her voice to a whisper, as though the rain-drops and the rustling fir boughs could overhear. ‘ A what .’’ I gasped. ‘ For people of feeble mind,’explained the woman, ‘and lunies,’ tapping her forehead as she. spoke. I stared at her. ‘Then,’ cried 1, ‘that is what Peter meant when he said that—that—’ ‘ One of the poor creatures has somehow given ’em the slip,’ said Mrs Gludge—‘ a gentleman, as has only been there a few days. Nobody knows just how it happened, but happen it did. My man’s gone over with a lantern to help hunt for him ; so has Peter.’ ‘He might have told me?’ I cried, indignantly. ‘ Anyway, 1 don’t think he ought to have left you here alone,’ said Mrs Gludge, severely. ‘ But you've come to stay with me, Mrs Gludge ?’ ‘ Bless your heart, Miss Ruth, no ! I’m on my way to carry a letter to Mr Komney’s up the road—a very important letter, with “in hash " writ on it.’ (For in addition to her duties as farmer's wife, and mother of a large family of little children, Mrs Gludge helped her husband in the care of the obscure little country post-office a mile down the road.) ‘ And—by the way, I’d nearly forgot it—l’ve got a letter for you, too. That's what brought me here.’ ‘ For me, Mrs < Budge.' Instinctively I put out my hand to grasp the treasure, while the woman fumbled first in one and then in another of her pockets. ‘ Its very strange,’ said she. ‘ 1 marie sure I had it. I i/i<i have it when I started away from home ; but now I remember. Just at the foot of Gibb’s Cliff 1 took out my handkerchief to tie around my neck, the wind came so keen around the rocks, and I must a-pulled it out with that, and everything too pitch dark around me to see. Oh, Miss

Ruth, I’m so sorry ! Please don’t report me, there's a good young lady, or I shall lose my place ! I swallowed down a great lump of discomfiture in my throat and tried to laugh. ‘ Report you, Mrs Gludge?’ said I. Of course not. It wasn’t your fault. If you hadn’t kindly thought of me, and started to bring it on your way to Romney’s, you never would have lost it.’ ‘And quite true,’ said Mrs Gludge, ruefully; • but, all the same, I wish I hadn’t been so thoughtful. I’ll send the boys out to look for it just as soon as—- ‘ Oh, never mind the letter,’ I interrupted. ‘ I dare say it’s only from Jack. To-morrow morning will do very well for that. But, Mrs Gludge, you’ll come back and stay with me till Peter gets back ? Jean is away, you know, and —-’ * • Yes, my dear, I’ll do that,’ assented the woman, evidently relieved to be let off so easily on the score of the letter. ‘ And it won’t be long first. It’s only a short half mile to Romney's, if the wind didn’t blow so like all possessed. ’ With a good-humoured nod she disappeared into the rain and darkness, and I ran back to pile fresh logs on the waning fire. Bank burglars, extradited wanderers, a lunatic at large—with all these possibilities whirling in my brain it is not strange that I lighted a second lamp in order effectually to banish all lurking shadows from the angles of the room, and started nervously when a sudden blast of wind shook the window-shutters as if with some imperious hand. ‘ I’ll go up to the garret and bring down some nuts,’ thought I, ‘ and then I’ll get some cider from the cellar. It will be fun to crack the nuts and watch the shells blaze in the fire, and Mrs Gludge will like a drink of cider when she comes back all wet and chill.’ Cheered by this happy thought, I caught up a lamp and Hew to the garret of the roomy old house where my father had bestowed all the nutty treasures of the autumn woods. Somehow, Priscilla, the cat, had got locked into the garret, and I had to release her from durance vile, and replace a box or two which she had knocked off from the windowsill, before I came down, driving her catship before me, with the lamp in one hand and an apronful of nuts in the other. Through the open sitting-room door streamed a ray of ruddy light into the Cimmerian darkness of the hall. I stopped abruptly. Surely I had closed that door when I came out, remembering a certain trick it had of slamming to and fro in windy weather like this. And at the same time a curious consciousness of some human presence near by crept over me like an unseen magnetic current. Nor was it a false premonition. As I stretched my neck to peep cautiously into the room, I saw seated before the fire a gentleman—a youngish gentleman, pale, black-haired and, as I thought, rather unsettled of aspect. And a decidedly wet and mud-bespattered gentleman, whose raiment steamed in the glorious blaze and crackle of the pine logs, as he sat there holding out his hands to the genial warmth. How had he gained an entrance ? Had I carelessly neglected to bolt the big door after Mrs Gludge’s departure ? Yes, I must have done so—and that was a proof of how utterly unfit I was to be left by myself. For a second I stood there quailing and quaking, my heart thumping like a trip-hammer, and a cold sweat breaking out upon my forehead, before I decided what to do. I had never seen a bank burglar, to be sure; but I was pretty certain this white-handed gentleman could not belong to that race. And I did not think he acted like any other scoundrel who was fleeing from the rigours of the law. He must be the gentleman, gone wrong in his head, who had ‘ escaped ’ from Stephenson’s. I was alone in the house with a maniac. And at the idea my heart beat more violently than ever, and the cold drops grew colder on my brow. With a sudden instinct I decided that there was nothing for it but flight. The worst feature of the case was that I could not get out of the house (be it remembered that Peter had taken away the key of the back kitchen door in his pocket) without passing directly through the room where the escaped lunatic sat basking before the fire. This, however, must be faced ; there was no remedy for it, and with one blind rush I precipitated myself through the room, tumbling over the cat, and scattering a shower of nuts as I went, and darted headlong through the door, with an involuntary shriek that might have rent the ceiling, if ever ceilings were rent in that way, except in the pages of romance. Directly into the arms of—Jack, my own brother Jack, who was coming in from the van with a light valise in one hand and a dripping carriage-robe in the other. ‘ Halloo !’ bawled Jack, staggering under the blow of my very unexpected appearance. ‘ Why—what the—l declare if it isn’t Ruthy !’ ‘ Oh, Jack ! oh, Jack !' I screamed, clutching at him like the drowning man at the proverbial straw. ‘ Where are all the folks ? What has become of the stable keys ? What have you done with Carleton ?’ he demanded. But I paid no heed to his interrogatories. ‘Come, Jack!’ I cried, ‘come quickly! The escaped lunatic! He’s right there in the sitting-room ! Oh, Jack, I do hope you’ve got your revolver !’ ‘ What ?’ roared Jack. ‘ An escaped lunatic ? Where the deuce has he come from ? Has he hurt Carleton ?’ He made a spring toward the sitting-room, in whose door stood the tall, pale man, straining his eyes out into the night. ‘ Where is he ?’ shouted Jack. ‘ Where’s who?’ said the escaped lunatic, in a pleasant, slightly drawling voice. ‘ It wasn’t he ! It was a she ! And she cleared the floor in a single bound, and Oh, I’m sure I beg a thousand pardons’—as he caught sight of me. ‘ But, please, what is the matter ?’ In a second my mental vision became as clear as crystal. I saw it all, and I envied Priscilla, the cat, because I could not vanish under the china cupboard as she did, and be gone ! I could only blush and hang my head, and stammer out incoherent apologies amid the laughter of Jack and the polite apologies of the friend whom he had unexpectedly brought with him, and w’hose coming had been announced, as it seemed, by the very letter Mrs Gludge had lost. That’s all. There is no sequel to my story. In real life I have found t hat stories seldom do have sequels. I had had a dreadful fright, and they all laughed at me at first, and made excuses for me and petted me afterwards and said, Poor little Huth !’ Father declared that he would-never

risk such a thing again, and discharged Peter on the spot, but Peter came back to his work the next day, just as usual, and he is here still. Mr Carleton was very nice and apologetic for coming in without knocking, to dry himself, while Jack was leading the horse to the barn, but he has not yet fallen in love with me, as an orthodox hero ought to do. The genuine escaped lunatic was captured near Stephenson’s, and taken under the impression that he was the GovernorGeneral, going to take possession of his vice-regency. And just half an hour after we had settled down to the cracking of nuts and drinking sweet cider that night, a merry group, a sepulchral knocking sounded at the doorand Mrs Gludge’s voice was heard proclaiming : ‘ If you please, miss, I’ve come to keep you company 1’