He set himself to rake out the fire, leaving only a few red embers and tiny morsels of coal to flame up fitfully from time to time in the bottom of the grate. Having done this, he stood and warmed himself for a little while, and tried to whistle a favorite tune. The attempt was a total failure. He broke down at the third bar, and ended lamentably in another sigh.
"What can be the matter with me? I never felt so miserable about going away from home before." Puzzling himself uselessly with such reflections as these, he went to the supper-table, and drank a glass of wine, picked a bit of a sandwich, and unnecessarily spoilt the appearance of two sponge cakes, by absently breaking a small piece off each of them. He was in no better humor for eating or drinking, than for whistling; so he wisely determined to light his candle forthwith, and go to bed.
After extinguishing the lights that had been burning on the supper-table, he cast a parting glance all round the room, and was then about to leave it, when the drawing of the old five-barred gate, which he had taken down for Mat to look at, and had placed on a painting-stand at the lower end of the studio, caught his eye. He advanced towards it directly—stopped half-way—hesitated—yawned—shivered a little—thought to himself that it was not worth while to trouble about hanging the drawing up over the garden door, that night—and so, yawning again, turned on his heel and left the studio.
Mr. Blyth's two servants slept up-stairs. About ten minutes after their master had ascended to his bed-room, they left the kitchen for their dormitory on the garret floor. Patty, the housemaid, stopped as she passed the painting room, to look in, and see that the lights were out, and the fire safe for the night. Polly, the cook, went on with the bedroom candle; and, after having ascended the stairs as far as the first landing from the hall, discreetly bethought herself of the garden door, the general care and superintendence of which was properly attached to her department in the household.
"I say, did you lock the garden door?" said Polly to Patty through the banisters.
"Yes; I did it when I took up master's tea," said Patty to Polly, appearing lazily in the hall, after one sleepy look round the fast-darkening studio.
"Hadn't you better see to it again, to make sure?" suggested the cautious cook.
"Hadn't you? It's your place," retorted the careless house-maid.
"Hush!" whispered Valentine, suddenly appearing on the landing above Polly, from his bedroom, arrayed in his flannel dressing-gown and nightcap. "Don't talk here, or you'll disturb your mistress. Go up to bed, and talk there. Good night."
"Good night, sir," answered together the two faithful female dependents of the house of Blyth, obeying their master's order with simpering docility, and deferring to a future opportunity all further considerations connected with the garden door.
The fire was fading out fast in the studio grate. Now and then, at long intervals, a thin tongue of flame leapt up faintly against the ever-invading gloom, flickered for an instant over the brighter and more prominent objects in the room, then dropped back again into darkness. The profound silence was only interrupted by those weird house-noises which live in the death of night and die in the life of day; by that sudden crackling in the wall, by that mysterious creaking in the furniture, by those still small ghostly sounds from inanimate bodies, which we have all been startled by, over and over again, while lingering at our book after the rest of the family are asleep in bed, while waiting up for a friend who is out late, or while watching alone through the dark hours in a sick chamber. Excepting such occasional night-noises as these, so familiar, yet always so strange, the perfect tranquillity of the studio remained undisturbed for nearly an hour after Mr. Blyth had left it. No neighbors came home in cabs, no bawling drunken men wandered into the remote country fastnesses of the new suburb. The night-breeze, blowing in from the fields, was too light to be audible. The watch-dog in the nurseryman's garden hard by, was as quiet on this particular night as if he had actually barked himself dumb at last. Outside the house, as well as inside, the drowsy reign of old primeval Quiet was undisturbed by the innovating vagaries of the rebel, Noise.
Undisturbed, till the clock in the hall pointed to a quarter past eleven. Then there came softly and slowly up the iron stairs that led from the back garden to the studio, a sound of footsteps. When these ceased, the door at the lower end of the room was opened gently from outside, and the black bulky figure of Mat appeared on the threshold, lowering out gloomily against a back-ground of starry sky.
He stepped into the painting-room, and closed the door quietly behind him; stood listening anxiously in the darkness for a moment or two; then pulling from his pocket the wax taper and the matches which he had bought that afternoon, immediately provided himself with a light.
While the wick of the taper was burning up, he listened again. Except the sound of his own heavy breathing, all was quiet around him. He advanced at once to the bureau, starting involuntarily as he brushed by Mr. Blyth's lay figure with the Spanish hat and the Roman toga; and cursing it under his breath for standing in his way, as if it had been a living creature. The door leading from the studio into the passage of the house was not quite closed; but he never noticed this as he passed to the bureau, though it stood close to the chink left between the door and the post. He had the false key in his hand; he knew that he should be in possession of the Hair Bracelet in another moment; and, his impatience for once getting the better of his cunning, he pounced on the bureau, without looking aside first either to the right or the left.
He had unlocked it, had pulled open the inner drawer, had taken out the Hair Bracelet, and was just examining it closely by the light of his taper (after having locked the bureau again)—when a faint sound on the staircase of the house caught his ear.
At the same instant, a thin streak of candle-light flashed on him through the narrow chink between the hardly-closed door and the doorpost. It increased rapidly in intensity, as the sound of softly-advancing footsteps now grew more and more distinct from the stone passage leading to the interior of the house.
He had the presence of mind to extinguish his taper, to thrust the Hair Bracelet into his pocket, and to move across softly from the bureau (which stood against the lock-side doorpost) to the wall (which was by the hinge-side doorpost); so that the door itself might open back upon him, and thus keep him concealed from the view of any person entering the room. He had the presence of mind to take these precautions instantly; but he had not self-control enough to suppress the involuntary exclamation which burst from his lips, at the moment when the thin streak of candle-light first flashed into his eyes. A violent spasmodic action contracted the muscles of his throat. He clenched his fist in a fury of suppressed rage against himself, as he felt that his own voice had turned traitor and betrayed him.
The light came close: the door opened—opened gently, till it just touched him as he stood with his back against the wall.
For one instant his heart stopped; the next, it burst into action again with a heave, and the blood rushed hotly through every vein all over him, as his wrought-up nerves of mind and body relaxed together under a sense of ineffable relief. He was saved almost by a miracle from the inevitable consequence of the rash exclamation that had escaped him. It was Madonna who had opened the door—it was the deaf and dumb girl whom he now saw walking into the studio.
She had been taking her working materials out of the tobacco-pouch in her own room before going to bed, and had then missed her mother-of-pearl bodkin-case. Suspecting immediately that she must have dropped it in the studio, and fearing that it might be trodden on and crushed if she left it there until the next morning, she had now stolen downstairs by herself to look for it. Her hair, not yet put up for the night, was combed back from her face, and hung lightly down in long silky folds over her shoulders. Her complexion looked more exquisitely clear and pure than ever, set off as it was by the white dressing-gown which now clothed her. She had a pretty little red and blue china candlestick, given to her by Mrs. Blyth, in her hand; and, holding the light above her, advanced slowly from the studio doorway, with her eyes bent on the ground, searching anxiously for the missing bodkin-case.