LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 248, 27 March 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A DEAD-LOCK, AND ITS KEY. ( From Chambers's Journal.) * A note for you, ma'am. No answer.' I was resting in my own room, after riding —it was six o'clock, too early to dress for dinner, too late to dress twice after taking off my habit—sleeping over a book, and comfortable in my white dressing-gown. I was bored by the interruption. The note was no more than this : ' Dear Saleen—l must stay where lam ; and you must go by yourself to the Lesters' —you won't mind. I saw Jack, and he said there was no party, as it would be troublesome with the wedding to-morrow, and the dining-room is given up to the breakfast. I've sent back the brougham. Thine, Fred. Fred is my brother, and was invited, like myself to dine quietly with these Lesters, whose pretty daughter was to be married next day to a friend of ours—specially Fred's and mine—Sir John March, commonly called 'Jack.'

' What keeps Fred?' was my passing thought: then I read a little longer, dressed, and drove to Portman-square. As I turned the corner, I saw visible preparations and signs of the morrow's wedding at the Lesters' door. A cart with flowers was unloading; an awning was being put up over the balcony and hall door: men in white aprons came and went. As the brougham drew up, I could see through the open door the bustle and stir within. At home in the house, I opened the dining-room door to see what progress was being made with the tables. Several maid-servants and some of the confectioner's men were arranging the ornaments and flowers; the cake, with its conventional erection, stood conspicuous. My friends' maid was putting moss into the flowerbaskets, and decorating the high dishes containing the more durable part of the feast. 'Well, Barker,' I was beginning, when I caught the woman's eyes. She was doing her work with a strange gravity, and her face was full of horror and pain. When she saw me, she let fall the flowers in her hand. 'Oh ma'm! Oh Miss Sarah! you've come.'

' Of course, I've come, I answered. 'What is the matter V

4 You haven't seen them, ma'am, have you?' 'Seen who? —the ladies? No; I came straight in here to look at the tables. Is there anything wrong? I suppose we're to dine in the library for to-day ? How nice it all looks !'

' Nice ! Oh ma'am, it's a mockery, it's awful! To see it all, and to go on as if—as if Oh Lord !' and the woman sat down, and rocked herself to and fro, with the tears running down her face. I was thoroughly alarmed now. ' Barker, is there anything wrong ? Is any one ill, or dead! Don't frighten me iike this. I'll go and see them, if you won't speak out;' and I went to the door. I just saw that Barker had descended to the floor, and that her head was on the chair, which she clutched, sobbing aloud.

I met the butler and another man crossing the hall, both with scared, solemn faces, and went on to the morning-room on the same floor. There all looked much as usual. The pride of the house and my friends' rather valuable collection of antiquities stood facing the door —a huge cabinet, with massive clamped doors, and richly cut brasswork——cisele as only genuine brasswork of old time can be; curiously inlaid woodwork ; marvellous locks, which no one but its owner understood, and no one else dared meddle with. It was a very old friend, the great armoire ; playing with the children of the house in my own childhood, I knew it, inside and outside, by heart. A mystery and a wonder then—an interest later—always a thing to admire and wonder at even now. It had three doors. The centre one, about four feet wide, and certainly six inches thick, shut in another, which again enclosed, with a space of about eight inches of waste room, a set of six drawers, of different sizes, and a sort of cupboard above them. We used to stand as little children between the drawers and the inner room, and wonder, supposing we were shut in, whether we could breathe long in that narrow enclosure, or be heard by any one without, supposing awful thought ! —we were forgotten, or the outer door were shut. I remember thinking of it in bed at night, as nervous children w T ill think of such things, till I was cold with horror. Both these two doors shut with a catch which was not a lock ; but we children were forbidden ever to open or shut them, except when Mr Lester was present. It was doubtful if any one else knew how to open them, for no one ever tried. The two side-doors opened with curious keys, which stood in the locks, chained to the armoire. They were valuables in themselves. The great key of the centre door, worth a hundred pounds or more, was considered too sacred for common eyes, and lay in a velvet-lined case in Mr Lester's own keeping—brought out only occasionally to shew to those who could aj>preoiate such things.

It stood there in the summer twilight, looming darkly in the quiet room, darker than the rest of the house, as back-rooms in London often are. Chilly, it seemed to me, in my thin white dress, coming from the hall full of sunset light. Turning to leave the room, I saw a man lying prone on his face upon the sofa ; so still, and so straight, and so strange in his attitude, that I could only stare for a minute, and wonder whether he was asleep or dead. His bancs were over his ears, grasping his hair as if in pain ; and I noticed the soles of his boots turned quite up, as one notices trifles in the midst of alarm or bewilderment. The nails in his boots shewed he was not dressed for dinner. His hat was lying on the floor on its side. His face I could not see ; but I knew it was Jack March, and I touched his arm in wonder.

' Jack, arc you awake? Arc you asleep? What is it?' 1 asked, with growing alarm. Was I to find something strange in every room I entered in this house? 'Jack l .' I said again. He turned, and .1 saw his wild haggard face, that looked at me with vague eyes that seemed not to see ; and then he put his head down with a moan, and covered nis ears once more as if to shut out sight and sound The room felt darker and chillier for this silent figure ; and the gaunt old armoire seemed bigger and more oppressive. I ran out of the room in a sort of panic. Upstairs, the drawing-room door stood open. The glow of the sunset was over the room, bright with flevvers and pictures ; and the open windows shewed the balconies hned With red cloth, and ready for the guests next

day. Silence here, and silent figures, twoof them—one crouched upon the floor, with arms outstretched upon a sofa; another lying half across an ottoman—the bride's mother and sister. As I came in and spoke, now fairly bewildered and frightened, Mrs Lester rose up with a despairing wail. Saleen, Saleen!' She stood t shaking and crying out my name. • Dear Mrs Lester,' I said, taking the poor woman's cold hands, ' come and sit down, and tell me what has happened.—Kate 1' I I called to the girl on the floor, ' come and give me that cushion.' She came mechanically, and helped her mother to the armchair. ' Now, tell me, if you can' « But Mrs Lester's head had fallen back upon the cushion, and she had fainted. The girl roused herself.

'No wonder,' she said; 'she has eaten nothing all day ; and then all this. It's too awful, Saleen. I shall go mad if 1 think; and papa has never come back!; ' Where is your father ?' 'I don't know. We sent down to the club and to the house: they can't find him. And we've searched his room, and it's not there. It's nowhere. And Jack is nearly wild; and we daren't break it open.' * It! What, child? Can't you say what you are talking about? I shall go mad next. What can't you nnd? And what ails you all?'

' Saleen, it's Mary. Mary is in there; and the key is gone, and papa is away; and she's dying there—suffocating;' and the girl flung herself on the floor with wild sobs and tears. Mrs Lester lay forgotten in her swoon; Kate rolled in unavailing misery on the carpet. I fled down-stairs. The servants were as busy as ever. I knew it all now.

'Good God!' I said to the butler, who who was carrying in a tray of glass, 'are you going on with all this useless folly, and that girl dying in the next room? Is no one going to try to save her?' Davis stood still, and looked at me pityingly; he shook his head sadly, and went on.

I rushed into the street: a policeman was standing near the carts. 'Come here,' I said. ' You'—to another man—' go and get a blacksmith. Run for your life! Tell them to bring tools to open locks and unscrew everything. Run! —And you get a hatchet; get anything: come and break open the great cabinet.' I gasped to the servants, who came out to see what it all meant: ' Don't lose a moment. Great heaven! the time that has been lost already!' They obeyed me, dispersing hither and thither. It seemed hours before the men came back with tools. ' Try the hinges first. Are there screws?' There* was that chance; and they worked at them, removing several heavy curious nails and screws, but seeming no nearer the object: the door was fast and firm. ' Oh! break it down!' I screamed at last; ' break it with the hatchet. What does anything matter, but her life—her life!'

'Her life!' said some strange voice close to me, and there stood Jack March swaying like a drunken man, with scared eyes and wild hair. Was his reason gone or going? ' Don't!' he shouted to a workman who was lifting the hatchet to kreak in the door. ' .Not up there. Her head.' And then he stooped his ear to the keyhole, listened intently a minute, raised his hand, as if to demand silence, and the intelligence fading out of his face, he rose with a discordant laugh, and walked away. * Bah!' he said ; 'her life against Lester's cabinet—her life against a key.' We did not even look round to see where we went stumbling through the hall, where he fell in a fit upon the floor. Fearing to injure that imprisoned figure—living or dead, who could tell—we left the door, and proceeded to break into the middle compartment from the wings. The grand old workmanship resisted : there seemed no weak point, no crevice, no possibility of breaking into the huge thing without fear of harm to that which it held locked and fast, within a few inches of our light and air and living life, done to death by a bit of clever machinery, the work of a dead hand. I would not think of beautiful Mary Lester as she might be, must be, if another hour went by. All this time, no questions were asked. I never knew till afterwards how it had all happened : how our father, only an hour or so earlier exhibiting his wonderful cabinet to a connoisseur in such matters, had gone upstairs with his friend to shew the key he prized so much, leaving the cabinet door open, intending to return—how Mary and the children, a younger brother and sister, had come in—and how the unumal eight <f the open door [had attracted them—how she looked in, and told the little ones she had not stood inside it ' so' since she waa as little as they were ; and laughing, tried to stand in the old place. ' I am not too big even now, am I !' she said ; and the children ran to sec, and pushing the doors against her, the spring caught, and shut her in with death and suffocation ; while they went shouting to the others that sister Mary was ' in there shut up,' aud * they couldn't let her out.' To be continued.