Joseph Wilmot, or, The Memoirs of a Man-Servant — page 48: what you’re looking at

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JOSEPH WILMOT; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A MAN-SERVANT. 30 immediately afterwards Mr. Lanover’s well-known. imperious knock at the front door reverberated through the house. He was returnimg; and now {f wondered for the first time during these many hours of my captivity, what could have kept him so long absent. It is true that he was sometimes away from home for an entire day, and even the whole night,—always, as stated in a previous chap- ter, alleging business engagements: but it now oceurred to me that his absence on this particular oecasion had some especial reference to myself. Not that I however cared much: I was in that state of mind which almost defied the power of a new calamity to excite my feelings more painfully than they were already exasperated. I heard the front door close: then five minutes elapsed in silence ; and at the expiration of that interval, the sounds of Mr. Lanover’s footsteps ascending the stairs, reached my ears. Those sounds ceased at my door: the key was introduced in the lock—and the humpback, with a candle in one hand and a plate in the other, made his appearance. “ Here is something for you to eat,” he said, in @ voice sternly implacable: and now I noticed that he had a stout stick under his arm. “ Yes,” he added, with a look of malignant significancy; “I have thought fit to bring with me a ready means of dashing your brains out, you vile perverse boy, if you dare raise your hand against me once more.” “A coward who would strike a poor girl—and that girl his own daughter,” I answered, my indig- nant spirit flaming up within me, “would not stop short at any ruffian-deed.” “Mr. Lanoyer had already deposited the plate upon the table: quick as lightning his right hand, which was thus left free, grasped the stout stick— and I was felled to the floor ; while a bitter impre- cation, but low and deeply muttered on Lanover’s part, accompanied that savage act. I was not stunned—but for an instant I was almost stupified. Then I thought he meant to murder me; and this dreadful idea, flashing to my mind, startled me into a wild terror. I was resolved to make a des- perate struggle on behalf of my young life—and was about to precipitate myself on the brutal humpback, when he dealt me another blow which struck me down a second time. I was now tho- roughly dismayed and cowed: my spirit was tamed down in a moment. Quickly as the dread of murder had flashed to my mind, did the certainty spring up within me that he did mot mean to take my life, but that he was only punishing me; andI felt the necessity of submission. ~ © Now,” he said, with a horrible grin, “I sup- pose you have had enough of it. Take and eat this food I have brought you.” ~ “7 do not want it,’ was my answer, given half in sullenness, half in affright. “Very well—just as you choose,” he responded. “Take off your clothes and get to bed: it’s past ten o’clock.” I obeyed: for I still smarted under the terrific blows which I had received; and I dreaded a repe- tition of them. LI accordingly laid aside my apparel, and entered the couch. My. Lanover proceeded to gather up my clothes: he opened my drawers and took out another suit which I had: even my very boots did he thus possess himself of; and as he was quitting the room with the bundle, he said, “ Now, you young rascal, you have no chance of ess cape. You see 1 am prepared for any of your tricks.” The light of the candle flashing upon his coun- tenance, showed that it was expressive of more than his usual malignity, blended with an air of fiendish triumph. He issued forth, locking the door behind him, and taking out the key. I was left again a captive, to the darkness of my chamber and the deep despondency of my thoughts. I could not go to sleep: I lay trembling with vague and undefined apprehensions. Mr. Lanover’s con- duct had been so desperately resolute—so re- morselessly brutal—that I felt persuaded there was no punishment his imagination could devise, short of murder, which his fiendish nature would not enable him to inflict. I heard the neighbouring church-clock strike eleven; and a few minutes afterwards there was a knock at the front door. Then I heard Mr. Lanover’s voice in the ground- floor passage, bawling out these words:—“ You need not answer it: I know who it is—some one forme. Youcan get up to bed, both of you: I will see all safe.’ These words were evidently addressed to the two servants; and accordingly I heard them both ascend in a few minutes to the chamber which they occupied on the highest floor, and which was above my own. Then again, for a few minutes, all was silent in the house—save the light tread of footsteps overhead, as the women-servants were retiring for the night. But now I heard the door of Annabel’s room, which was on the same level as my own, gently open. I listened with sus- pended breath: for the idea struck me that the circumstance was to some extent connected with myself, from the simple fact that the proceeding was evidently conducted with stealthiness, I dis- tinctly heard her fairy footsteps descend the first few stairs of the flight downward: light though these steps were, yet so keen were all my faculties at the moment; that I could have heard a pin drop. But when those sounds were no longer audible, I lay wondering what it could all mean. I lay listening too: but half-an-hour elapsed without any farther token of what was going on. So strong however was the intuitive conviction that Annabel was up and about the house for some purpose in connexion with myself, that I got out of bed and listened at the door. I had not been many minutes there, when I heard a door on the landing below open and shut gently,—the sound evidencing caution. I knew it to be the door of the chamber which Mrs. Lanover now occupied during her indisposition ; and therefore I at once concluded that Annabel was up merely for the pur- pose of ministering to her mother, and that she erept about thus stealthily for fear of provoking some new outburst of passion and some fresh ebul- lition of violence on the part of her father. I went back to bed, and gradually sank off into a state not exactly of slumber where all conscious ness is lost, but into a kind of dreamy repose where the intellect loses not entire command over its reflections. Thus I was still experiencing, as it were, a continuation of the same ideas as before ; when I was aroused by hearing a key turning in the lock of my door. At the same instant the church-clock began striking; and I knew it must be midnight, though I counted not the strokes rrr, Comcooolks (Cc) im