CHAPTER VI.

THE WHITE CHAMBER.

A FAT slatternly woman, by no means young, with a face swollen and red with weeping, pushed open a side door, and standing behind the portress, gaped on them, and asked— “Is it them, Nell?”

“Arra, ma’am, can’t ye keep quite. No it isn’t no one, but here’s two leedies ye see, that wants a bed an’ a fire, and a cup o’ tay in the white room. Come along i’ ye plase, my leedy.”

And in an’ aside, as she passed, my Aunt heard her say, close in the blubbered face of the fat woman— “Arrah, ma’am, dear, will ye get in out o’ that, an’ shut the doore.

The stout woman complied; and as they mounted the broad stairs, they again heard the sounds of crying.

This certainly savoured in no wise of the warm welcome for which inns are famous. The mansion, too, old wainscoted, and palpably altogether too large for its business. They met Boots coming down the stairs with a dingy kitchen candle and a hammer in his hand; a pallid fellow, with the sort of inquiring hang-dog look that seemed to belong to the staff of “The Good Woman.” He stood close by the wall in the corner of the lobby as they passed by, and did not offer to carry up the trunk.

“Bring a guvvaul o’ wudd, will ye. Barney, jewel, to the white room?” said the handmaid over her shoulder.

My Aunt and Winnie followed her to the head of the stairs, where she placed the trunk, and this slight circumstance I mention, because it was immediately connected with my Aunt’s adventure, and she took a coalscuttle instead, and conducting by two turns into a long wainscoted gallery, she opened a door on the right, and they entered a large square room, with a recess near one angle, two tall narrow windows, with white curtains rather yellow, and one very capacious bed, with curtains of the same. There was a skimpy bit of carpet near the hearth, and very scant and plain furniture.

The wood having arrived, Nell made a good fire, placed the deal table and two chairs near it, lighted a large mould of four to the pound, such as Molly Dumpling sported on the night of her dreadful adventure with William Gardner, and altogether the room began to put on its cheeriest looks. And when the tea-things, eggs, and battered toast arrived, my Aunt and Winnie being well warmed by this time, sat down with their feet on the fender, the one mollified and the other consoled.

After tea, my Aunt, who was a fidgety person, made a tour of the room, and a scrutiny of the open cupboard and drawers, but she found nothing, except an old black glove for the left hand, in one of the drawers.

When this was over she sat by the fire again, and speculated for Winnie’s instruction upon their geographical probabilities. But Winnie was growing sleepy.

“A double-bedded room would have been more comme il faut; but it is plainly a poor place, and after all the bed is unusually large,” thought my Aunt.

And so, indeed, it was, extraordinarily large, and of an old-fashioned construction.

My Aunt, who was of an active inquiring genius, opened a bit of one of the shutters and peeped out It showed a view of the inn yard. The side next her had been formed by a wing of the house; but that now stood up a gaunt roofless wall, with the broad moon shining through its sashless windows. On the left was a row of tall and dingy stables and offices, and opposite, another ruined building, a shed, and a tall arched gate. The pavement was grass-grown and rutty, and the whole thing looked awfully seedy, and not the less gloomy for some great trees that darkly overhung the buildings from the outside.

Having made her survey, my Aunt would have closed the shutter, but that she saw a man walk lazily from the side beneath her, his hands in his pockets, across the yard, casting an undulating and misshapen shadow over the uneven pavement.

When he reached the gate at the other side, he took a key from his pocket, and unlocked a wicket in it, and setting his foot on the plank beneath, leaned his elbow on the side, and lazily looked out, as if on the watch for somebody. A huge dog came pattering out of a kennel in the shadow, and placing his great head by the man’s leg, sniffed gloomily into the darkness.

“Are ye expectin’ any friends, ma’am?” asked Nell’s coarse voice over my Aunt’s shoulder, so sharply and suddenly that the start brought the blood to her thin cheeks.

“Not very likely to see friends here,” replied my Aunt, Very tartly. “What do you mean, woman, by talking that way over my shoulder?”

The grim chambermaid by this time had seen the man, and was eyeing him under her projecting and somewhat shrewish brows.

“An’ ye come from Hoxton?” she said rather slowly and sharply.

“I told you so, woman.”

“It wasn’t from Westerton, ye’re sure?”

“I’ve told you where we came from, though it is no business of yours. I never heard of Westerton.”

My Aunt added this a little emphatically, owing to an undefined feeling that a suspicion of having come from Westerton was likely in some mysterious way to prejudice her.

The maid replied nothing, but said a little gruffly, “By your lave, ma’am and pushing by her, she closed the shutters, and drew a great wooden sliding bolt across with a jerk.

My Aunt was so taken by surprise that she lost her time for retorting with effect, as she would have done, but she was so incensed, that from the fireplace she could not forbear saying, “I think you a most impertinent woman.”

To which the maid made no reply, but turned down the bed-clothes, and arranged the curtains; and gathering together the tea equipage, carried the tray away, shutting the door.