 Portion 1 of The Grey Woman. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jane Greensmith of JaneGS.com. The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Klighorn-Gaskell. Portion 1. There is a mill by the Neckarside to which many people resort for coffee, according to the fashion, which is almost national in Germany. There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill. It is on the Mannheim, the flat and unromantic side of Heidelberg. The river turns the mill wheel with a plenteous gushing sound. The outbuildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, there is a garden full of willows and arbors and flower beds not well kept, but very profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the arbors together. In each of these arbors is a stationary table of white painted wood and light movable chairs of the same color and material. I went to drink coffee there with some friends in 1840. The stately old miller came out to greet us as some of the party were known to him of old. He was of a grand build of a man and his loud musical voice with its tone, friendly and familiar. His rolling laugh of welcome went well with a keen bright eye, the fine cloth of his coat, and the general look of substance about the place. Poultry of all kinds abounded in the millyard, where there were ample means of livelihood for them, strewed on the ground. But not content with this, the miller took out handfuls of corn from the sacks and threw liberally to the cocks and hens that ran almost under his feet in their eagerness. And all the time he was doing this, as it were habitually, he was talking to us and ever in a non calling to his daughter and the survey-maids to bid them hasten the coffee we had ordered. He followed us to an arbor and saw a serve to his satisfaction with the best of everything we could ask for and then left us to go round to the different arbors and see that each party was properly attended to. And as he went, this great, prosperous, happy-looking man whistled softly one of the most plaintive heirs I ever heard. His family have held this mill ever since the old Pilatenate days, or rather, I should say, have possessed the ground ever since then, for two successive mills of theirs have been burned down by the French. If you want to see Cher in a passion, just talk to him of the possibility of a French invasion. This moment, still whistling that mournful air, we saw the miller going down the steps that led from the somewhat raised garden into the millyard and so I seemed to have lost my chance of putting him in a passion. We had nearly finished our coffee and our cuckoo and our cinnamon cake when heavy splashes fell on our thick, leafy covering quicker and quicker they came coming through the tender leaves as if they were tearing them asunder. All the people in the garden were hurrying under shelter or seeking for their carriages standing outside. Up the steps, the miller came hastening with a crimson umbrella fit to cover everyone left in the garden and followed by his daughter and one or two maidens each bearing an umbrella. Come into the house, come in, I say. It is a summer storm and will flood the place for an hour or two till the river carries it away. Here, here! And we followed him back into his own house. We went into the kitchen first. Such an array of bright copper and tin vessels I never saw and all the wooden things were as thoroughly scoured. The red tile floor was spotless when we went in but in two minutes it was all over slop and dirt with a tread of many feet but the kitchen was filled and still the worthy miller kept bringing in more people under his great crimson umbrella. He even called the dogs in and made them lie down under the tables. His daughter said something to him in German and he shook his head merrily at her. Everybody laughed. What did she say? I asked. She told him to bring the ducks in next but indeed if more people come we shall be suffocated. What with the thundery weather and the stove and all these steaming clothes I really think we must ask leave to pass on. Perhaps we might go in and see Frau Scherrer. My friend asked the daughter of the house for permission to go into an inner chamber and see her mother. It was granted and we went into a sort of saloon overlooking the necker. Very small, very bright and very close. The floor was slippery with polish, long narrow pieces of looking glass against the walls reflected the perpetual motion of the river opposite. A white porcelain stove with some old-fashioned ornaments of brass about it, a sofa covered with Utrecht velvet, a table before it and a piece of worsted worked carpet under it, a vase of artificial flowers and, lastly, an alcove with a bed in it on which lay the paralyzed wife of the Good Miller, knitting busily, formed the furniture. I spoke as if this was all that was to be seen in the room but sitting quietly while my friend kept up a brisk conversation in a language which I but half understood, my eye was caught by a picture in a dark corner of the room and I got up to examine it more nearly. It was that of a young girl of extreme beauty evidently of middle rank. There was a sensitive refinement in her face as if she almost shrank from the gaze which of necessity the painter must have fixed upon her. It was not over well-painted but I felt that it must have been a good likeness from the strong impressive peculiar character which I have tried to describe. From the dress I should guess it to have been painted in the latter half of the last century and I afterwards heard that I was right. There was a little pause in the conversation. Will you ask Frau Scherer who this is? My friend repeated my question and received a long reply in German. Then she turned round and translated it to me. It is the likeness of a great aunt of her husbands. My friend was standing by me and looking at the picture with sympathetic curiosity. See, here is the name on the open page of this Bible. Anna Scherer, 1778. Frau Scherer says there is a tradition in the family that this pretty girl with her complexion of lilies and roses lost her color so entirely through fright that she was known by the name of the gray woman. She speaks as if this Anna Scherer lived in some state of lifelong terror but she does not know details, refers me to her husband for them. She thinks he has some papers which were written by the original of that picture for her daughter who died in this very house not long after our friend there was married. We can ask Herr Scherer for the whole story if you like. Oh yes, pray do, said I. And as our host came in at this moment to ask how we were fairy and to tell us that he had sent to Heidelberg for carriages to convey us home seeing no chance of the heavy rain abating my friend after thanking him passed on to my request. Ah, said he, his face changing. The aunt Anna had a sad history. It was all owing to one of those hellish Frenchmen and her daughter suffered for it. The good cousin Ursula, as we all called her when I was a child. To be sure, the good cousin Ursula was his child as well. The sins of the fathers are visited on their children. The lady would like to know all about it, would she? Well, there are papers, a kind of apology the aunt Anna wrote for putting an end to her daughter's engagement or rather facts which she revealed that prevented cousin Ursula from marrying the man she loved and so she would never have any other good fellow else I have heard say my father would have been thankful to have made her his wife. All this time he was rummaging in the drawer of an old fashioned bureau and now he turned round with a bundle of yellow manuscript in his hand which he gave to my friend saying, take it home, take it home and if you care to make out our crap German writing you may keep it as long as you like and read it at your leisure. Only I must have it back again when you have done with it. That's all. And so we became possessed of the manuscript of the following letter which it was our employment during many a long evening that ensuing winter to translate and in some parts to abbreviate. The letter began with some reference to the pain which she had already afflicted upon her daughter by some unexplained opposition to a project of marriage. But I doubt if without the clue with which the Good Miller had furnished us we could have made out even this much from the passionate broken sentences that made us fancy that some scene between the mother and daughter and possibly a third person had occurred just before the mother had begun to write. Thou dost not love thy child, mother. Thou dost not care if her heart is broken. Ah, God! And those words of my beloved Ursula ring in my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I allay a dying. And her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child, hearts do not break. Life is very tough as well as very terrible. But I will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all. And thou shalt bear the burden of choice. I may be wrong. I have little wit left. I never had much, I think. But an instinct serves me in place of judgment and that instinct tells me that thou and thy Henry must never be buried. Yet I may be an error. I would feign make my child happy. Lay this paper before the good priest Schreisheim if, after reading it, thou hast doubts which make thee uncertain, only I will tell thee all now, on condition that no spoken word ever passes between us on the subject. It would kill me to be questioned. I should have to see all present again. My father held, as thou knowest, the mill on the Neckar, where thy newfound uncle Scherrer now lives. Thou rememberst the surprise with which we were received their last vintage twelve month, how thy uncle disbelieved me when I said I was his sister Anna, whom he had long believed to be dead, and how I had to lead thee underneath the picture, painted of me long ago, and point out, feature by feature, the likeness between it and thee, and how, as I spoke, I recalled first my own mind, and then by speech to his, the details of the time when it was painted, the merry words that passed between us then, a happy boy and girl, the position of the articles of furniture in the room, our father's habits, the cherry tree now cut down, the chaded the window of my bedroom, through which my brother was wont to squeeze himself, in order to spring on to the topmost bow that would bear his weight, and thence would pass me back his cap, laden with fruit, to where I sat on this windowsill, too sick with fright for him to care much for eating the cherries. And at length Fritz gave way, and believed me to be his sister Anna, even as though I were risen from the dead, and thou rememberst how he fetched in his wife, and told her that I was not dead, that was come back to the old house once more, changed as I was, and she would scarce believe him, and scanned me with a cold, distrustful eye, till at length, for I knew her of old as Babetta Moeller, I said I was well to do, and needed not to seek out friends for what they had to give, and then she asked, not me, but her husband, why I had kept silent so long, leading all, father, brother, everyone that loved me in my own dear home, twisty me dead, and then thine uncle, thou rememberst, said he cared not to know more than I cared to tell, that I was his Anna, found again to be a blessing to him in his old age, as I had been in his boyhood. I thanked him in my heart for his trust, for were the need for telling all less than it seems to me now I could not speak of my past life, but she, who was my sister-in-law still, held back her welcome, and for want of that, I did not go to live in Heidelberg as I had planned beforehand in order to be near my brother Fritz, but contented myself with his promise to be a father to my Ursula when I should die and leave this weary world. That Babetta Moeller was, as I may say, the cause of all my life's suffering. She was a baker's daughter in Heidelberg, a great beauty as people said, and indeed, as I could see for myself, I too, thou sauced my picture, was reckoned of beauty, and I believe I was so. Babetta Moeller looked upon me as a rival, she liked to be admired, and had no one much to love her. I had several people to love me, thy grandfather, Fritz, the old servant, Katin, Carl, the head apprentice at the mill, and I feared admiration and notice, and the being stared at as the Sean Moellerin whenever I went to make my purchase in Heidelberg. Those were happy, peaceful days. I had Katin to help me in the housework, and whatever we did, pleased my brave old father, who was always gentle and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern enough with the apprentices in the mill. Carl, the oldest of these, was his favorite, and I can see now that my father wished him to marry me, and that Carl himself was desirous to do so. But Carl was rough-spoken and passionate, not with me, but with the others, and I shrank from him in a way which I fear gave him pain, and then came thy uncle Fritz's marriage, and Babetta was brought to the mill to be its mistress. Not that I cared much for giving up my post, but for, in spite of my father's great kindness, I always feared that I did not manage well for so large a family, with a man and a girl under Katin, we sat down eleven each night to supper. But when Babetta began to find fault with Katin, I was unhappy at the blame that fell on faithful servants, and by and by I began to see that Babetta was egging on Carl to make more open love to me, and, as she once said, to get done with it and take me off to a home of my own. My father was growing old and did not perceive all my daily discomfort. The more Carl advanced, the more I disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being married and could not bear anyone who talked to me about it. Things were in this way when I had an invitation to go to Carl's room to visit a school fellow of whom I had been very fond. Babetta was all for my going. I don't think I wanted to leave home, and yet I had been very fond of Sophie Ruprecht, but I was always shy among strangers. Somehow the affair was faddled for me, but not until both Fritz and my father had made inquiries as to the character and position of the Ruprex. They learned that the father had held some kind of inferior position about the Grand Duke's court and was now dead, leaving a widow, a noble lady, and two daughters, the elder of whom was Sophie, my friend. Madame Ruprecht was not rich, but more than respectable. Gentile. When this was ascertained, my father made no opposition to my going. Babetta forwarded it by all the means in her power, and even my dear Fritz had his word to say in its favour. Only Catian was against it. Catian and Carl. The opposition of Carl did more to send me to Carl's ruin than anything, for I could have objected to go, but when he took upon himself to ask what was the good of going a-gadding, visiting strangers of whom no one knew anything, I yielded to circumstances, to the pulling of Sophie and the pushing of Babetta. I was silently vexed, I remember, at Babetta's inspection of my clothes, at the way in which she settled that this gown was too old-fashioned, or that too common, to go with me on my visit to a noble lady, and at the way in which she took upon herself to spend the money my father had given me to buy what was requisite for the occasion. And yet I blamed myself, for everyone else thought her so kind for doing all this, and she herself meant kindly too. At last I quitted the mill by the necar side. It was a long day's journey, and Fritz went with me to Carl's ruin. The Ruprex lived on the third floor of a house, a little behind one of the principal streets, in a cramped-up court, to which we gained admittance through a doorway in the street. I remember how pinched their rooms looked after the large space we had at the mill, and yet they had an air of grandeur about them which was new to me, and which gave me pleasure, faded as some of it was. Madam Ruprex was too formal a lady for me. I was never at my knees with her, but Sophie was all that I had recollected her at school, kind, affectionate, and only rather too ready with her expressions of admiration and regard. The little sister kept out of our way, and that was all we needed in the first enthusiastic renewal of our early friendship. The one great object of Madam Ruprex's life was to retain her position in society, and as her means were much diminished since her husband's death, it was not much comfort, though there was a great deal of show in their way of living, just the opposite of what it was at my father's house. I believe that my coming was not too much desired by Madam Ruprex, as I had brought with me another mouth to be fed, but Sophie had spent a year or more in entreating for permission to invite me, and her mother, having once consented, was too well-bred not to give me a stately welcome. The life in Karlsruhe was very different from what it was at home. The hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the potage was weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer, the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant. We might not knit which would have relieved the tedium a little, but we sat in a circle talking together, only interrupted occasionally by a gentleman, who, breaking out of the knot of men who stood near the door, talking eagerly together, stole across the room on tiptoe his hat under his arm, and bringing his feet together in the position we called the first at the dancing school, made a low bow to the lady he was going to address. The first time I saw these manners, I could not help smiling, but Madam Ruprex saw me and spoke to me next morning rather severely, telling me that, of course, in my country breeding, I could have seen nothing of court manners or French fashions, but that that was no reason for my laughing at them. Of course, I tried never to smile again in company. This visit to Karl's Rue took place in 89, just when everyone was full of the events taking place at Paris. And yet, at Karl's Rue, French fashions were more talked of than French politics. Madam Ruprex especially thought a great deal of all French people, and this again was quite different to us at home. Fritz could hardly bear the name of a Frenchman, and it had nearly been an obstacle to my visit to Sophie that her mother preferred being called Madame to her proper title, a frow. One night I was sitting next to Sophie and longing for the time when we might have supper and go home, so as to be able to speak together, a thing forbidden by Madam Ruprex, rules of etiquette, which strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation pass between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn when two gentlemen came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party from the formal manner in which the host led him up and presented him to the hostess. I thought I had never seen anyone so handsome or so elegant. His hair was powdered, of course, but one could see from his complexion that it was fair in its natural state. His features were as delicate as girls and set off by two little mouches as we called patches in those days. One at the left corner of his mouth, the other prolonging, as it were, the right eye. His dress was blue and silver. I was so lost in admiration of this beautiful young man that I was as much surprised as if the angel Gabriel had spoken to me when the lady of the house brought him forward to present him to me. She called him Moncio de la Torrelle, and he began to speak to me in French. But though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of soft lisp that I thought charming. But before the end of the evening, I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his manners and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame Ruprecht was, however, pleased with the precise thing that displeased me. She liked either Sophie or me to create a sensation. Of course, she would have preferred that it should have been her daughter, but her daughter's friend was next best. As we went away, I heard Madame Ruprecht and Moncio de la Torrelle reciprocating civil speeches with might and main for which I found out that the French gentleman was coming to call on us the next day. I did not know whether I was more glad or frightened, for I had been kept upon stilts of good manners all the evening. But still, I was flattered when Madame Ruprecht spoke as if she had invited him, because he had shown pleasure in my society and even more gratified by Sophie's ungrudging delight at the evident interest I had excited in so fine and agreeable a gentleman. Yet, with all this, they had hard work to keep me from running out of the salon the next day when we heard his voice inquiring at the gate on the stairs for Madame Ruprecht. They had made me put on my Sunday gown and they themselves were dressed as for a reception. When he was gone away, Madame Ruprecht congratulated me on the conquest I had made, for indeed he had scarcely spoken to anyone else beyond what mere civility required and had almost invited himself to come in the evening to bring some new song which was all the fashion in Paris, he said. Madame Ruprecht had been out all morning, as she told me, to glean information about Moncio de la Torrelle. He was a proprietaire, had a small château on the Vosges Mountains. He owned land there, but had a large income from some sources quite independent of this property. Altogether he was a good match as she emphatically observed. She never seemed to think that I could refuse him after this account of his wealth, nor do I believe she would have allowed Sophie a choice, even had he been as old and ugly as he was young and handsome. I do not quite know. So many events have come to pass since then and blurred the clearness of my recollections. If I loved him or not. He was very much devoted to me. He almost frightened me by the excess of his demonstrations of love. And he was very charming to everybody around me who all spoke of him as the most fascinating of men and of me as the most fortunate of girls. And yet I never felt quite at my ease with him. I was always relieved when his visits were over, although I missed his presence when he did not come. He prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was staying at Carle's Rue on purpose to woo me. He loaded me with presents, which I was unwilling to take. Only Madame Ruprak seemed to consider me an effective prude if I refused them. Many of these presents consisted of articles of valuable old jewelry, evidently belonging to his family. By accepting these I doubled the ties which were formed around me by circumstances even more than by my own consent. In those days we did not write letters to absent friends as frequently as is done now, and I had been unwilling to name him in the few letters that I wrote home. At length, however, I learned from Madame Ruprak that she had written to my father to announce the splendid conquest I had made and to request his presence at my betrothal. I started with astonishment. I had not realized that affairs had gone so far as this. But when she asked me in a stern, offended manner what I had meant by my conduct if I did not intend to marry Monsieurs de la Torrelle, I had received his visits, his presence, all his various advances without showing any unwillingness or repugnance. And it was all true. I had shown no repugnance, though I did not wish to be married to him, at least, not so soon. What could I do but hang my head and silently consent to the rapid enunciation of the only course which now remained for me if I would not be esteemed a heartless coquette by all the rest of my days? There was some difficulty which I afterwards learnt that my sister-in-law had obviated about my betrothal taking place from home. My father and Fritz especially were forehaving me return to the mill and there be betrothed and from thence to be married. But the Ruprak's and Monsieurs de la Torrelle were equally urgent on the other side and Babetta was unwilling to have the trouble of the commotion at the mill and also, I think, a little dislike the idea of the contrast of my grander marriage with her own. So my father and Fritz came over to the betrothal. They were to stay at an inn in Karlsruhe for a fortnight at the end of which time the marriage was to take place. Monsieurs de la Torrelle told me he had business at home which would oblige him to be absent during the interval between the two events. And I was very glad of it for I did not think that he valued my father and my brother as I could have wished him to do. He was very polite to them, put on all the soft grand manner which he had rather dropped with me and complimented us all round beginning with my father and Madame Ruprak and ending with little Alvina. But he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church ceremonies which my father insisted on and I fancy Fritz must have taken some of his compliments as satire for I saw certain signs of manner by which I knew that my future husband for all his civil words had irritated and annoyed my brother. But all the money arrangements were liberal in the extreme and more than satisfied almost surprised my father. Even Fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled. I alone did not care about anything. I was bewitched in a dream, a kind of despair. I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness and I did not see how to get out of it. I clung to my own home people that fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices, their ways were all so pleasant and familiar to me after the constraint in which I had been living. I might speak and do as I liked without being corrected by Madame Ruprak or reproved in a delicate complementary way by Monsieur de la Torrelle. One day I said to my father that I did not that I would rather go back to the dear old Mill. But he seemed to feel the speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as great as if I had committed perjury as if after the ceremony of betrothal no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet he asked me some solemn questions but my answers were not such as to do me any good. Does thou know any fault or crime in this man that should prevent God's blessing from resting on thy marriage with him? Does thou feel aversion or a pugnance to him in any way? And to all this what could I say? I could only stammer out that I did not think I loved him enough. And my poor old father saw in this reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did not know her own mind but who had now gone too far to recede. So we were married in the court chapel a privilege which Madame Ruprak had used no end of efforts to obtain for us and which she must have thought was to secure us all possible happiness both at the time and in recollection afterwards. We were married and after two days spent in festivity at Karol's Rue among all our new fashionable friends there I bade goodbye forever to my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vorge but I found an amount of determination under that effeminate appearance and manner for which I was not prepared and he refused my first request so decidedly that I dared not urge it. Henceforth Anna said he you will move in a different sphere of life and though it is possible that you may have the power of showing favor to your relations from time to time yet much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable and is what I cannot allow. I felt almost afraid after this formal speech of asking my father in Fritz to come and see me but when the agony of bidding them farewell overcame all my prudence I did beg them to pay me a visit ere long but they shook their heads and spoke of business at home of different kinds of life of my being a French woman now. Only my father broke out at last with a blessing and said if my child is unhappy which God forbid let her remember that her father's house is ever open to her. I was on the point of crying out oh take me back then now my father oh my father when I felt rather than saw my husband present near me he looked on with a slightly contemptuous air and taking my hand in his he led me weeping away saying that short farewells were always the best when they were inevitable. It took us two days to reach a chateau in the vogue for the roads were bad and the way difficult to ascertain. Nothing could be more devoted than he was all the time of the journey. It seemed as if he were trying in every way to make up for the separation which every hour made me feel the more complete between my present and my former life. I seemed as if I were only now wakening up to a full sense of what marriage was and I dare say I was not a cheerful companion on the tedious journey. At length jealousy of my regret for my father and brother got the better of Monsieux de la Torrelle and he became so much displeased with me that I thought my heart would break with the sense of desolation. So it was a no cheerful frame of mind that we approached Le Rocher and I thought that perhaps it was because I was so unhappy that the place looked so dreary. On one side the chateau looked like a raw new building hastily run up for some immediate purpose without any growth of trees or underwood near it only the remains of the stone used for the building not yet cleared away from the immediate neighborhood although weeds and lichens had been suffered to grow near and over the heaps of rubbish. On the other were the great rocks from which the place took its name and rising close against them as if almost a natural formation was the old castle whose building dated many centuries back. It was not large nor grand but it was strong and picturesque and I used to wish that we lived in it rather than in the smart half furnished apartment in the new edifice which had been hastily got ready for my reception. In Congress as the two parts were they were joined into a whole by means of intricate passages and unexpected doors the exact positions of which I never fully understood. Monciol de la Torrelle led me to a suite of rooms set apart for me and formally installed me in them as in a domain of which I was sovereign. He apologized for the hasty preparation which was all he had been able to make for me but promised before I asked or even thought of complaining that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish before many weeks had elapsed. But when in the gloom of an autumnal evening I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the half furnished salon. I clung to Monciol de la Torrelle and begged to be taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage. He seemed angry with me although he affected to laugh and so decidedly put aside the notion of my having any other rooms but these that I trembled in silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called up as people in the background of these gloomy mirrors. There was my bourgeois, a little lestuary, my bedroom with its grand and tarnished furniture which I commonly made into my sitting room locking up the various doors which led into the bourgeois, the salon, the passages. All but one through which Monciol de la Torrelle always entered from his own apartments in the older part of the castle. But this preference of mine for occupying my bedroom annoyed Monciol de la Torrelle, I am sure, though he did not care to express his displeasure. He would always allure me back into the salon which I disliked more and more from its complete separation from the rest of the building by the long passage into which all the doors of my apartment opened. This passage was closed by heavy doors in Portier through which I could not hear a sound from the other parts of the house and of course the servants could not hear any movement or cry of mine unless expressly summoned. To a girl brought up as I had been in a household where every individual lived all day in the sight of every other member of the family never wanted either cheerful words or the sense of silent companionship. This grand isolation of mine was very formidable and the more so because Monciol de la Torrelle had landed proprietor, sportsman, and what not was generally out of doors the greater part of every day and sometimes for two or three days at a time. I had no pride to keep me from associating with the domestics. It would have been natural to me in many ways to have sought them out for a word of sympathy in those dreary days when I was left so entirely to myself had they been like our kindly German servants but I disliked them, one and all, I could not tell why. Some were civil but there was a familiarity in their civility which repelled me. Others were rude and treated me more as if I were an intruder than their master's chosen wife and yet of the two sets I like these last the best. The principal male servant belonged to this latter class. I was very much afraid of him. He had such an air of suspicious surliness about him and all he did for me and yet Monciol de la Torrelle spoke of him as most valuable and faithful. Indeed it sometimes struck me that Lafeuille ruled his master in some things and this I could not make out for while Monciol de la Torrelle behaved towards me as if I were some precious toy or idol to be cherished and fostered and petted and indulged. I soon found out how little I or apparently anyone else could bend the terrible will of the man who had on first acquaintance appeared too effeminate and languid to exert his will in the slightest particular. I had learned to know his face better now and to see that some vehement depth of feeling the cause of which I could not fathom made his gray eye glitter with pale light and his lips contract and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all had been so open and aboveboard at home that I had no experience to help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupract and her said would have called a great marriage because I lived in Chateau with many servants bound ostensibly to obey me as a mistress. I understood that Monsieur de la Torrelle was fond enough of me in his way, proud of my beauty, I dare say, for he often enough spoke about it to me. But he was also jealous and suspicious and uninfluenced by my wishes unless they tallied with his own. I felt at this time as if I could have been fond of him too if he would have let me. But I was timid from my childhood and before long my dread of his displeasure coming down like thunder in the midst of his love for such slight causes as a hesitation and reply, a wrong word or a sigh from my father conquered my humorous inclination to love one who was so handsome, so accomplished, so indulgent and devoted. But if I could not please him when indeed I loved him you may imagine how often I did wrong when I was so much afraid of him as to quietly avoid his company for fear of his outbursts of passion. One thing I remember noticing that the more Monsieur de la Torrelle was displeased with me the more Lefebvre seemed to chuckle and when I was restored to favor sometimes on a sudden impulse is that which occasioned my disgrace Lefebvre would look a-scanse at me with his cold malicious eyes and once or twice at such times he spoke most disrespectfully to Monsieur de la Torrelle. I have almost forgotten to say that in the early days of my life at La Rocher Monsieur de la Torrelle in contemptuous, indulgent pitiate my weakness in disliking the dreary grandeur of the salon rode up to the milliner in Paris from whom my corbeille de mariage had come to desire her to look out for me a maid of middle age experienced in the toilette and with so much refinement that she might on occasion serve as companion to me. End of Portion One Recording by Jane Greensmith of JaneGS.com Portion Two of The Grey Woman This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Jane Greensmith The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Klikhorn-Gaskell Portion Two A Norman woman, a month by name was sent to La Rocher by the Paris milliner to become my maid. She was tall and handsome though upwards of forty and somewhat gaunt. But, on first seeing her, I liked her. She was neither rude nor familiar in her manners and had a pleasant look of straightforwardness about her that I had missed in all the inhabitants of the château and had foolishly sat down in my own mind as a national blunt. Amont was directed by Monsieur de la Torrelle to sit in my boudoir and to be always within call. He also gave her many instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly belonged to my department of management. But I was young and inexperienced and thankful to be spared any responsibility. I dare say it was true what Monsieur de la Torrelle said before many weeks had elapsed that, for a great lady, a lady of a castle, I became sadly too familiar with my Norman waiting maid. But you know that by birth we were not very far apart in rank. Amont was the daughter of a Norman farmer, I of a German miller. And besides that, my life was so lonely it almost seemed as if I could not please my husband. He had written for someone capable of being my companion at times and now he was jealous of my free regard for her, angry because I could sometimes laugh at her original tunes and amusing proverbs while when with him I was too much frightened to smile. From time to time, families from a distance of some leagues drove through the bad roads and their heavy carriages to pay us a visit. And there was an occasional talk of our going to Paris when public affairs should be a little more subtle. These little events and plans were the only variations in my life for the first 12 months if I accept the alternations in Monsieur de la Torrelle's temper, his unreasonable anger and his passionate fondness. Perhaps one of the reasons that made me take pleasure and comfort in Amont society was that whereas I was afraid of everybody, I do not think I was half as much afraid of things as of persons, Amont feared no one. She would quietly beared La Fave and he respected her all the more for it. She had a knack of putting questions to Monsieur de la Torrelle which respectfully informed him that she had detected the weak point but for bore to press him too closely upon it out of deference to his position as her master. And with all her shrewdness to others she had quite tender ways with me. All the more so at this time because she knew what I had not yet ventured to tell Monsieur de la Torrelle that by and by I might become a mother. That wonderful object of mysterious interest to single women who no longer hoped to enjoy such blessedness themselves. It was once more autumn late in October but I was reconciled to my habitation. The walls of the new part of the building no longer looked bare and desolate. The debris had been so far cleared away by Monsieur de la Torrelle's desire as to make me a little flower garden in which I tried to cultivate those plants that I remembered as growing at home. Amont and I had moved the furniture in the rooms and adjusted it to our liking. My husband had ordered many an article from time to time that he thought would give me pleasure and I was becoming tame to my apparent imprisonment in a certain part of the great building the whole of which I had never yet explored. It was October, as I say, once more. The days were lovely though short in duration and Monsieur de la Torrelle had occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate, the superintendents of which so frequently took him away from home. He took Lefebvre with him and possibly some more of the lackeys. He often did. And my spirits rose a little at the thought of his absence. And then the new sensation that he was the father of my unborn babe came over me and I tried to invest him with this fresh character. I tried to believe that it was his passionate love for me that made him so jealous and tyrannical, imposing as he did restrictions on my very intercourse with my dear father from whom I was so entirely separated as far as personal intercourse was concerned. I had, it is true, let myself go into a sorrowful review of all the troubles which lay hidden beneath the seeming luxury of my life. I knew that no one cared for me except my husband and Amand for it was clear enough to see that I, as his wife and also as a parvenu, was not popular among the few neighbors who surrounded us. And as for the servants, the women were all hard and impudent looking, treating me with a semblance of respect that had more of mockery than reality in it. While the men had a lurking kind of fierceness about them, sometimes displayed even to Monsieur de la Torrelle who, on his part, it must be confessed, was often severe even to cruelty in his management of them. My husband loved me, I said to myself, but I said it almost in the form of a question. His love was shown fitfully and more in ways calculated to please himself than to please me. I felt that for no wish of mine would he deviate one tittle from any predetermined course of action. I had learned the inflexibility of those thin, delicate lips. I knew how anger would turn his very complexion to deadly white and bring the cruel light into his pale eyes. The love I bore to anyone seemed to be a reason for his hating them and so I went on pitting myself one long dreary afternoon during that absence of his of which I have spoken, only sometimes remembering to check myself in my murmurings by thinking of the new unseen link between us and then crying afresh to think how wicked I was. Oh, how well I remember that long October evening. Amont came in from time to time, talking away to cheer me, talking about dress in Paris and I hardly know what, but from time to time looking at Bikini with her friendly dark eyes and with serious interest too, though all her words were about frivolity. At length she heaped the fire with wood, drew the heavy silken curtains close for I had been anxious hitherto to keep them open so that I might see the pale moon mounting the skies as I used to see her. The same moves rise from behind the Kaiser Stool at Heidelberg. The sight made me cry so Amont shut it out. She dictated to me as a nurse does to a child. Now, madame must have the little kitten to keep her company, she said, while I go and ask Martin for a cup of coffee. I remember that speech in the way it roused me, for I did not like Amont to think I wanted amusing by a kitten. It might be my petulance, but this speech, such as she might have made to a child, annoyed me and I said that I had reason for my loneliness of spirits, meaning that they were not so imaginary a nature that I could be diverted from them by the gambles of a kitten. So though I did not choose to tell her all, I told her apart, and as I spoke, I began to suspect that the good creature knew much of what I withheld and that the little speech about the kitten was more thoughtfully kind than it had seemed at first. I said that it was so long since I had heard from my father that he was an old man and so many things might happen, I might never see him again. And I so seldom heard from him or my brother. It was a more complete and total separation than I had ever anticipated when I married. And something of my home and my life previous to my marriage I told the good Amont, for I had not been brought up as a great lady and the sympathy of any human being was precious to me. Amont listened with interest and in return told me some of the events and sorrows of her own life. Then, remembering her purpose, she set out in search of the coffee, which ought to have been brought to me in the hour before, but in my husband's absence, my wishes were seldom attended to and I never dared to give orders. Presently she returned, bringing the coffee and a great large cake. See, said she, setting it down, look at my plunder, madam must eat. Those who eat always laugh. And besides, I have a little nose that will please madam. Then she told me that lying on a table in the great kitchen was a bundle of letters come by the courier from Strasburg that very afternoon. Then, fresh from her conversation with me, she had hastily untied the string that bound them, but had only just traced out one that she thought was from Germany when a servant man came in. And with the start he gave her, she dropped the letters which he picked up swearing at her for having untied and disarranged them. She told him that she believed there was a letter there for her mistress, but he only swore the more, saying that if there was, it was no business of hers or of his either, for that he had the strictest orders always to take all letters that arrived during his master's absence into the private sitting room of the latter, a room into which I had never entered, although it opened out of my husband's dressing room. I asked Amant if she had not conquered and brought me this letter. No, indeed, she replied. It was almost as much as her life was worth to live among such a set of servants. It was only a month ago that Jacques had stabbed Valentin for some jesting talk. Had I never missed Valentin, that handsome young lad who carried up the wood into my salon, poor fellow, he lies dead and cold now, and they said in the village he had put an end to himself. Those of the household knew better. Oh, I need not be afraid. Jacques was gone. No one knew where. But with such people it was not safe to abrade or insist. Moncieur would be at home the next day, and it would not be long to wait. But I felt as if I could not exist till the next day without the letter. It might be to say that my father was ill, dying. He might cry for his daughter from his deathbed. In short, there was no end to the thoughts and fancies that haunted me. It was of no use for Amant to say that after all, she might be mistaken that she did not read writing well, that she had had but a glimpse of the address. I let my coffee cool, my food all became distasteful, and I brung my hands with impatience to get at the letter and have some news of my dear ones at home. All the time, Amant kept her imperturbable good temper, first reasoning, then scolding. At last she said, as if wearied out, that if I would consent to make a good supper, she would see what could be done as to our going to Moncieur's room in search of the letter after the servants were all gone to bed. We agreed to go together with all was still and look over the letters. There could be no harm in that. And yet, somehow, we were such cowards we dared not do it openly and in the face of the household. Presently my supper came up, partridges, bread, fruits and cream. How well I remember that supper. We put the untouched cake away in a sort of buffet and poured the cold coffee out of the window in order that the servants might not take offense at the apparent fancifulness of sending down for food I could not eat. I was so anxious for all to be in bed that I told the footmen who served that he need not wait to take away the plates and dishes but might go to bed. Long after I thought the house was quiet, Amant in her caution made me wait. It was past 11 before we set out with cat-like steps and veiled light along the passages to go to my husband's room and steal my own letter if it was indeed there. A fact about which Amant had become very uncertain in the progress of our discussion. To make you understand my story I must now try to explain to you the plan of the Chateau. It had been, at one time, a fortified place of some strength perched on the summit of a rock which projected from the side of the mountain. But additions had been made to the old building which must have borne a strong resemblance to the castles overhanging the Rhine. And these new buildings were placed so as to command a magnificent view being on the steepest side of the rock from which the mountain fell away, as it were, leaving the great plain of France in full survey. The ground plan was something of the shape of three sides of an oblox. My apartments in the modern edifice occupied the narrow end and had this grand prospect. The front of the castle was old and ran parallel to the road far below. In this were contained the offices and public rooms of various descriptions into which I never penetrated. The back wing, considering the new building in which my apartments were as the center, consisted of many rooms of a dark and gloomy character as the mountainside shut out much of the sun and heavy pine woods came down within a few yards of the windows. Yet on this side, on a projecting plateau of the rock, my husband had formed the flower garden of which I have spoken, for he was a great cultivator of flowers in his leisure moments. Now my bedroom was the corner room of the new buildings on the part next to the mountains. Hence, I could have let myself down into the flower garden by my hands on the windowsill on one side without danger of hurting myself. While the windows at bright angles with these looked sheared down a descent of a hundred feet at least. Going still farther along this wing, I came to the old building. In fact, these two fragments of the ancient castle had formerly been attached by some such connecting apartments as my husband had rebuilt. These rooms belong to Monciel de la Torrelle. His bedroom opened into mine. His dressing room lay beyond, and that was pretty nearly all I knew. But the servants, as well as he himself, had a knack of turning me back under some pretense if they ever found me walking about alone as I was inclined to do when I first came from a sort of curiosity to see the whole of the place of which I had found myself mistress. Monciel de la Torrelle never encouraged me to go out alone either in a carriage or for a walk saying always that the roads run safe in those disturbed times. Indeed, I have sometimes fancied since that the flower garden to which the only access from the castle was through his rooms was designed in order to give me exercise and employment under his own eye. But to return to that night, I knew, as I have said, that Monciel de la Torrelle's private room opened out of his dressing room and this out of his bedroom, which again opened into mine, the corner room. But there were other doors into all these rooms and these doors led into a long gallery lighted by windows looking into the inner court. I do not remember our consulting much about it. We went through my room into my husband's apartment through the dressing room but the door of communication into a study was locked so there was nothing for it but to turn back and go by the gallery to the other door. I recollect noticing one or two things in these rooms then seen by me for the first time. I remember the sweet perfume that hung in the air, the scent bottles of silver that decked his toilet table and the whole apparatus for bathing and dressing, more luxurious even than those which he had provided for me. But the room itself was less splendid in its proportions than mine. In truth, the new buildings ended at the entrance to my husband's dressing room. There were deep window recesses in walls eight or nine feet thick and even the partitions between the chambers were three feet deep but over all these doors or windows there fell thick, heavy draperies so that I should think no one could have heard in one room what passed in another. We went back into my room and out into the gallery. We had to shade our candle from a fear that possessed us. I don't know why but some of the servants in the opposite wing might trace our progress towards the part of the castle unused by anyone except my husband. Somehow, I had always the feeling that all the domestics except Amant were spies upon me and that I was trampled in a web of observation and unspoken limitation extending over all my actions. There was a light in the upper room. We paused and Amant would have again retreated but I was chafing under the delays. What was the harm of seeking my father's unopened letter to me in my husband's study? I, generally the coward, now blamed Amant for her unusual timidity but the truth was she had far more reason for suspicion as to the proceedings of that terrible household that I had ever known of. I urged her on. I pressed on myself. We came to the door locked but with the key in it. We turned it. We entered. The letters lay on the table. Their white oblongs catching the light in an instant and revealing themselves to my eager eyes hungering after the words of love from my peaceful distant home. But just as I pressed forward to examine the letters the candle which Amant held caught in some draft went out and we were in darkness. Amant proposed that we should carry the letters back to my salon collecting them as well as we could in the dark and returning all but the expected one for me but I begged her to return to my room where I kept tinder and flint and to strike a fresh light and I remained alone in the room of which I could only just distinguish the size and the principal articles of furniture. A large table with the deep overhanging cloth in the middle escritor and other heavy articles against the walls. All this I could see as I stood there my hand on the table close by the letters my face towards the window which both from the darkness of the wood growing high up the mountain side and the fate light of the declining moon seemed only like an oblong of paler purple or black than the shadowy room. How much I remembered from my one instantaneous glance before the candle went out how much I saw as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I do not know but even now in my dreams comes up that room of horror distinct in its profound shadow. Amont could hardly have been gone a minute before I felt an additional gloom before the window and heard soft movements outside soft but resolute and continued until the end was accomplished and the window raised. Immortal terror of people forcing an entrance at such an hour and in such a manner as to leave no doubt of their purpose I would have turned to fly when first I heard the noise only that I feared by any quick motion to catch their attention as I also ran the danger of doing by opening the door which was all but closed and to whose handling I was unaccustomed. Again quick as lightning I be thought me of the hiding place between the locked door to my husband's dressing room and the portier which covered it. But I gave that up I felt as if I could not reach it without screaming or fainting. So I sank down softly and crept under the table hidden as I hoped by the great deep table cover with its heavy fringe I had not recovered my swooning senses fully and was trying to reassure myself as to my being in a place of comparative safety for above all things I dreaded the betrayal of fainting and struggled hard for such courage as I might attain by deadening myself to the danger I was in by inflicting intense pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that mark on my hand. It was there in my agony I bit out a piece of flesh with my relentless teeth thankful for the pain which helped to numb my terror. I say I was but just concealed within I heard the window lifted and one after another stepped over the sill and stood by me so close that I could have touched their feet. Then they laughed and whispered my brain swam so that I could not tell the meaning of their words but I heard my husband's laughter among the rest low hissing scornful as he kicked something heavy that they had dragged in over the floor and which laid near me so near that my husband's kick in touching it touched me too. I don't know why I can't tell how but some feeling and not curiosity prompted me to put out my hand ever so softly ever so little and feel in the darkness for what lay spurned beside me. I stole my groping palm of the clenched and chilly hand of a corpse. Strange to say this roused me to an instant vividness of thought. Tell this moment I had almost forgotten the month. Now I planned with a favorite rapidity how I could give her a warning not to return or rather I should say I tried to plan for all my projects were utterly futile as I might have seen from the first. I could only hope she would hear the voices of those who were now busy in trying to kindle a light swearing awful oaths at the mislaid articles which would have enabled them to strike fire. I heard her step outside coming nearer and nearer. I saw from my hiding place the line of light beneath the door more and more distinctly close to it her footstep paused. The men inside at the time I thought they had been only two but I found out afterwards there were three paused in their endeavors and were quite still as breathless as myself I suppose. Then she slowly pushed the door open with gentle motion to save her flickering candle from being again extinguished. For a moment all was still. Then I heard my husband say as he advanced towards her he wore writing boots the shape of which I knew well as I could see them in the light. Amant may I ask what brings you here into my private room? He stood between her and the dead body of a man from which ghastly heap I shrank away as it almost touched me. So close were we all together. I could not tell whether she saw it or not. I could give her no warning or make any dumb utterance of signs to bid her what to say. If indeed I knew myself what would be best for her to say. Her voice was quite changed when she spoke quite hoarse and very low. Yet it was steady enough as she said what was the truth that she had come to look for a letter which she believed had arrived for me from Germany. Good brave Amant not a word about me Monsieur de la Torrelle answered with a grim blasphemy and a fearful threat. He would have no one prying into his premises. Madame should have her letters if there were any when he chose to give them to her. If indeed he thought it well to give them to her at all. As for Amant this was her first warning but it was also her last. And taking the candle out of her hand he turned her out of the room his companions discreetly making a screen so as to throw the corpse into deep shadow. I heard the key turn in the door after her. If I had ever had it was gone. Now I only hoped that whatever was to befall me might soon be over for the tension of nerve was growing more than I could bear. The instant she could be supposed to be out of hearing two voices began speaking in the most angry terms to my husband up braiding him for not having detained her gagged her nay one was for killing her saying he had seen her I fall on the face of the dead man whom he now kicked in his passion. Though the form of their speech was as if they were speaking to equals yet in their tone there was something of fear. I am sure my husband was their superior or captain or someone. He replied to them almost as if he were scoffing at them saying it was such an expenditure of labor having to do with fools that ten to one the woman was only telling the simple truth and that she was frightened enough by discovering her master in his room to be thankful to escape and return to her mistress to whom he could easily explain but his companions felt a cursing me and saying that since Monsieur de la Torelle had been married he was fit for nothing but to trust himself fine and sent himself with perfume that as for me they could have got him twenty girls prettier and with far more spirit in them. He quietly answered that I suited him and that was enough. All this time they were doing something I could not see what to the corpse. Sometimes they were too busy rifling the dead body I believe to talk again they let it fall with the heavy resistless thud and took to quarrelling they taunted my husband with angry vehemence enraged at his scoffing and scornful replies his mocking laughter yes holding up his poor dead victim the better to strip him of whatever he wore that was valuable. I heard my husband laugh just as he had done when exchanging repartee in the little salon of the Ruprex at Carl's room I hated and dreaded him from that moment. At length as if to make an end of the subject he said with cool determination in his voice. Now my good friends what is the use of all this talking when you know in your hearts that if I suspected my wife of knowing more than I choose of my affairs she would not outlive the day. Remember Victorine because she merely joked about my affairs in an imprudent manner and rejected my advice to keep a prudent tongue but ask nothing and say nothing. She has gone a long journey longer than to Paris. This one is different to her. We all know that Madame Victorine knew she was such a chatterbox but this one may find out a vast deal and never breathe a word about it. She is so sly. Some fine day we may have the country raised and the gendarms down upon us from Strasburg and all owing to your I think this rouse Montseur de la Torrelle a little from his contemptuous indifference for he ground an oath through his teeth and said feel this dagger is sharp Henry if my wife breathes a word and I am such a fool as not to have stopped her mouth effectively before she can bring down gendarms upon us. Just let that good steel find its way to my heart. Let her gas but one titill let her have not a grand proprietor much less imagine that I am chief of chauffeur and she follows Victorine on the long journey beyond Paris that very day. She allowed with you yet I never judged women well though still silent ones at the devil she'll be off during some of your absences having picked out some secret that will break us all on the wheel Bah said his voice and then in a minute he added let her go if she will where she goes I will follow so don't cry before you're hurt by this time they had nearly stripped the body in the conversation turned on what they should do with it I learned that the deadman was this year the boss see a neighboring gentleman whom I had often heard of as hunting with my husband I had never seen him but they spoke as if he had come upon them while they were robbing some cologne merchant torturing him after the cruel practice of the chauffeur by roasting them to reveal any hidden circumstances connected with their wealth of which the chauffeur afterwards made use and this sure de poissie coming down upon them and recognizing Monsieur de la tourale they had killed him and brought him thither after nightfall I heard him whom I called my husband laugh his little light laugh as he spoke of the way in which the dead body had been strapped before one of the writers in such a way that it appeared to any pass or by as if in truth the murderer were tenderly supporting some sick person he repeated some mocking reply of double meaning which he himself had given to someone who made inquiry he enjoyed the play upon words softly applauding his own wit and all the time the poor helpless outstretched arms of the dead lay close to his dainty boot then another stooped my heart stopped beating and picked up a letter lying on the ground a letter that had dropped out of Monsieur de Posse's pocket a letter from his wife full of tender words of endearment and pretty babblings of love this was read aloud with course ribbed comments on every sentence each trying to outdo the previous speaker when they came to some pretty words about a sweet Maurice their little child away with its mother on some visit they laughed at Monsieur de la Torrelle and told him that he would be hearing such woman's driveling some day up to that moment I think I had only feared him but his unnatural half ferocious reply made made me hate even more than I dreaded him but now they grew weary of their savage merriment the jewels and watch had been apprised the money and papers examined and apparently there was some necessity for the body being interred quietly and before a daybreak they had not dared leave him where he was slain for fearless people should come and recognize him and raise the hue and cry upon them for they all along spoke as if it was their constant endeavor to keep the immediate neighborhood of la rochée in the most orderly and tranquil condition so as never to give cause for visits from the gendarm they disputed a little as to whether they should make their way into the castle larder through the gallery and satisfy their hunger before the hasty internment or afterwards I listened with eager feverish interest as soon as this meaning of their speeches reached my hot and troubled brain the words they uttered seemed only to stamp themselves with terrible force on my memory so that I could hardly keep from repeating them a loud like a dull miserable unconscious echo but my brain was numb to the sense of what they said unless I myself were named and then I suppose some instinct of self-preservation stirred within me and quickened my sense and how I strained my ears and nerved my hands and limbs beginning I feared might betray me I gathered every word they spoke not knowing which proposal to wish for but feeling that whatever was finally decided upon my only chance of escape was drawing near I once feared lest my husband should go to his bedroom before I had had that one chance in which case he would most likely have perceived my absence he said that his hands were soiled I shuttered for it might be with life blood Jess turned his purpose and he left the room with the other two left it by the gallery door left me alone in the dark with the stiffening corpse now now was my time if ever and yet I could not move it was not my cramped and stiffened joints that crippled me it was the sensation of that dead man's close presence I almost fancied I almost fancy still I heard the arm nearest me move myself up as if once more imploring and fallen dead despair at that fancy if fancy it were I screamed aloud in mad terror and the sound of my own strange voice broke the spell I drew myself to the side of the table farthest from the corpse with as much slow caution as if I really could have feared the clutch of that poor dead arm powerless forever more I softly raised myself up and stood sick and trembling holding by the table too dizzy to know what to do next I nearly fainted when a low voice spoke when a month from the outside of the door whispered madam the faithful creature had been on the watch had heard my scream and having seen the three ruffians troop along the gallery down the stairs and across the court to the offices in the other wing of the castle she had stolen to the door of the room in which I was the sound of her voice gave me strength I walk straight towards it as one benighted on a dreary more only perceiving the small steady light which tells of human dwellings takes heart and steers straight onward where I was where that voice was I knew not but go to it I must or die the door once opened I know not by which of us I fell upon her neck grasping her tight till my hands ached with the tension of their hold yet she never uttered a word only she took me up in her vigorous arms and bore me to my room and laid me on my bed I do not know more as soon as I was placed there I lost sense I came to myself with a horrible dread lest my husband was by me with the belief that he was in the room in hiding waiting to hear my first words watching for the least sign of the terrible knowledge I possessed to murder me I dared not breathe quicker I measured and timed each heavy inspiration I did not speak nor move nor even open my eyes for long after I was in my full my miserable senses I heard someone treading softly about the room as if with a purpose not as if for curiosity or merely to beguile the time someone passed in and out of the salon and I still lay quiet feeling as if death were inevitable but wishing that the agony of death were passed again faintness stole over me but just as I was sinking into the horrible feeling of nothingness I heard a Vermont's voice close to me saying drink this madam and let us be gone all is ready I let her put her arm under my head and raised me and pour something down my throat all the time she kept talking in a quiet measured voice unlike her own so dry and authoritative she told me that a suit of her clothes lay ready for me that she herself was as much disguised as the circumstances permitted her to be that what provisions I had left from my supper were stowed away in her pockets and so she went on dwelling on little details of the most commonplace description but never alluding for an instant to the fearful cause why flight was necessary I made no inquiry as to how she knew or what she do I never asked her either then or afterwards I could not bear it we kept our dreadful secret close but I suppose she must have been in the dressing room adjoining and heard all in fact I dare not speak even to her as if there were anything beyond the most common event in life in our preparing thus to leave the house of blood by stealth in the dead of night she gave me directions short condensed directions without reasons just as you do to a child unlike a child I obeyed her she went off into the door and listened and often too she went to the window and looked anxiously out for me I saw nothing but her and I dare not let my eyes wander from her for a minute I heard nothing in the deep midnight silence but her soft movements and the heavy beating of my own heart at last she took my hand and led me in the dark through the salon once more into the terrible gallery where across the black darkness the windows admitted pale she did ghosts of light upon the floor clinging to her I went unquestioning for she was human sympathy to me after the isolation of my unspeakable terror on we went turning to the left instead of to the right past my suite of sitting rooms where the gilding was red with blood into that unknown wing of the castle that front at the main road lying parallel far below she guided me along the basement passages to which we had now descended until we came to a little open door through which the air blew chill and cold bringing for the first time a sensation of life to me the door led into a kind of seller through which we groped our way to an opening like window but which instead of being glazed was only fenced with iron bars two of which were loose as amont evidently knew for she took them out with the ease of one who had performed the action often before and then helped me to follow her out into the free open air we stole around the end of the building and on turning the corner she first I felt her hold on me tightened for an instant and the next step I too heard distant voices and the blows of a spade upon the heavy soil for the night was very warm and still we had not spoken a word we did not speak now touch was safer and as expressive she turned down towards the high road I followed I did not know the path we stumbled again and again and I was much bruised so doubtless was she but bodily painted me good at last we were on the planer path of the high road I had such faith in her that I did not venture to speak even when she paused as wondering to which hand she should turn but now for the first time she spoke which way did you come when he brought you here first I pointed I could not speak we turned in the opposite direction still going along the high road in about an hour we struck up to the mountain side scrambling far up before we even dare to rest far up and away again before the day had fully dawn then we looked about for some place of rest and concealment and now we dare to speak and whispers Amont told me that she had locked the door of communication between his bedroom and mine and as in a dream I was aware that she had also locked and brought away the key of the door between the ladder and the salon he will have been too busy this night to think much about you he will suppose you are asleep I should be the first to be missed but they will only just now be discovering our loss I remember those last words of hers made me pray to go on I felt as if we were losing precious time and thinking either of rest or concealment but she hardly replied to me so busy was she in seeking out some hiding place at length giving it up into spare we proceeded onwards a little way the mountain side sloped downwards rapidly and in the full morning light we saw ourselves in a narrow valley made by a stream which forced its way along it about a mile lower down the rose the pale blue smoke of a village a mill wheel was lashing up the water close at hand though out of sight keeping under the cover of every sheltering tree or bush we worked our way down past the mill down to a one arched bridge which doubtless formed part of the road between the village and the mill this will do said she and we crept under the space and climbing a little way up the rough stone work we seated ourselves on a projecting ledge and crouched in the deep damp shadow Amon sent a little above me and made me lay my head on her lap then she fed me and took some food herself and opening out her great dark cloak she covered up every light colored speck about us and thus we sat shivering and shuttering yet feeling a kind of rest through it all simply from the fact that motion was no longer imperative and that during the daylight our only chance of safety was to be still but the damp shadow in which we were sitting was blighting from the circumstance of the sunlight never penetrating there and I dreaded last before night and the time for exertion again came on I should fill illness creeping all over me to add to our discomfort it had rained the whole day long and the stream fed by a thousand little mountain brooklets began to swell into a torrent rushing over the stones with a perpetual and dizzying noise every now and then I was awakened from the painful dose into which I continually fell by a sound of horses feet over our head sometimes lumbering heavily as if dragging a burden sometimes rattling and galloping and with the sharper cry of men's voices coming cutting through the roar of the waters at length day fell we had to drop into the stream which came above our knees as we waited to the bank there we stood stiff and shivering even a month's courage seemed to fail we must pass this night and shelter somehow said she for indeed the rain was coming down piteously I said nothing I thought that surely the end must be death in some shape and I only hope that to death might not be added the terror of the cruelty of men in a minute or so she had resolved on her course of action we went up the stream to the mail the familiar sounds the scent of the wheat the flower whitening the walls all reminded me of home and it seemed to me as if I must struggle out of this nightmare and waken and find myself once more a happy girl by the neck our side they were long and I'm barring the door at which Amant had knocked at length an old feeble voice inquired who was there and what was sought Amant answered shelter from the storm for two women but the old woman replied with suspicious hesitation that she was sure it was a man who was asking for shelter and that she could not let us in but at length she satisfied herself and unbarred the heavy door and admitted us she was not an unkindly woman but her thoughts all traveled in one circle and that was that her master the miller had told her on no account to let any man into the place during his absence and that she did not know if he would not think to women as bad and yet that as we were not men no one could say she had disobeyed him for it was a shame to let a dog be out at such a night as this Amant with ready wit told her to let no one know that we had taken shelter there that night and that then her master could not blame her and while she was thus in joining secrecy as the wisest of course with a view to far other people than the miller she was hastily helping me to take off my wet clothes and spreading them as well as the brown mantel that had covered us both before the great stove which warmed the room with the effectual heat that the old woman's failing vitality required all this time the poor creature was discussing with herself as to whether she had disobeyed orders in a kind of garuulous way that made me fear much for her capability of retaining anything secret if she was questioned by and by she wandered away to an unnecessary revelation of her master's whereabouts gone to help in the search for his landlord this year to proceed who lived at the chateau just above and who had not returned from his chase the day before so the intended imagined he might have met with some accident and had some in the neighbors to beat the forest and the hillside she told us much besides giving us a place as housekeeper where there were more servants and less to do as her life here was very lonely and dull especially since her master's son had gone away gone to the wars she then took her supper which was evidently apportioned out to her with a sparing hand as even if the idea had come into her head she had not enough to offer us any fortunately warmth was all that we required and that thanks to Amant's care was returning to our chilled bodies after supper the old woman grew drowsy but she seemed uncomfortable at the idea of going to sleep and leaving us still in the house indeed she gave us pretty broad hints as to the priority of our going once more out into the bleak and stormy night but we begged to be allowed to stay under shelter of some kind and at last a bright idea came over her and she bait us mount by a ladder to a kind of loft which went half over the lofty mill kitchen in which we were sitting we obeyed her what else could we do and found ourselves in a spacious floor without any safeguardor wall boarding or railing to keep us from falling over into the kitchen in case we went to near the edge it was in fact the storeroom or garret for the household there was bedding piled up boxes and chests mill sacks the winter store of apples and nuts bundles of old clothes broken furniture and many other things no sooner were we up there then the old woman dragged the ladder by which we had ascended away with the chuckle as if she was now secure that we could do no mischief and sat herself down again once more to doze and await her master's return we pulled out some bedding and gladly laid ourselves down on our dried clothes and in some warmth hoping to have the sleep we so much needed to refresh ourselves and prepare us for the next day but I could not sleep and I was aware from her breathing that a month was equally wakeful we could both see through the crevices between the boards that formed the flooring into the kitchen below very partially lighted by the common lamp that hung against the wall near the stove on the opposite side to that on which we were end of portion two recording by Jane Greensmith of Jane GS .com