Chapter 2: Red Room
I struggled the whole way: a new thing for me, which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Agatha and Eva had of me. The fact is, I was out of myself: I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go to all lengths.
"Hold her arms, Eva: she's like a mad cat."
"You shameful girl" cried the lady's-maid. "What shocking conduct, Zoe, to hit a young gentleman, your benefactress's son! Your young master."
"Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?"
"No; you are less than a servant, you do nothing for your keep. Sit down, and think over your actions."
By now, they shoved me into the room indicated by Aunt Yule, and thrust me on a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pair of hands pushed me down instantly.
"If you don't sit still, you will be tied down," said Agatha. "Eva, lend me one of your belt; she would rip mine instantly."
Eva reached to retrieve one of her belts from her waist. This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of me.
"Don't take it off," I cried; "I won't move."
I attached myself to my seat with my hands.
"You better not," said Agatha; and when she sensed that I was really cooling down, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Eva stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.
"She never did so before," said Agatha at last, turning to Eva.
"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Mrs. Yule often my opinion about the girl, and she agreed with me. She's feisty little thing: I never saw a girl her age with so much energy."
Agatha didn't answered; but addressing me, she said—"You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Yule: she keeps you: if she were to throw you out, you would have to go out on the streets."
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same thing. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Eva joined in—
"And you shouldn't think of yourself as an equal with the Mrs. Yule and Master Yule, because she kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them."
"What we tell you is for your own good," added Agatha, without any harshness in her voice, "you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, I am sure, she will send you away."
"Besides," said Eva, "God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Agatha, leave her. Say your prayers, Zoe, when you are by yourself; if you don't repent, something evil might be come down the chimney and take you away."
They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square area, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors renders it necessary to use all the accommodations the mansion contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest rooms in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the center; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn color with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the dresser, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chilly, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because it was far from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe down the mirrors and the furniture of a week's accumulation of dust: and Aunt Yule herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where legal documents, her jewel-casket, and a picture of her deceased husband were stored; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.
Uncle Yule had been dead nine years: it was in this room he breathed his last breath; here he lay motionless; his coffin was taken by the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had lingered in it from frequent intrusion.
My seat, to which Agatha and the bitter Eva had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble fireplace; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a large mirror between them reflected the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when finally I dared to move, I got up and checked. Sadly yes: a jail wasn't secured so well. Returning to my seat, I had to pass the mirror; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. Everything looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I imagined it like one of the tiny ghosts, half fairy, half imp, Agatha's bedtime stories represented as coming out of shadows and appearing before the eyes of belated travelers. I returned to my stool.
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigor.
All Marc Yule's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifferences, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, resurfaced in my disturbed mind like a dark veil at a funeral. Why was I always suffering, always ridiculed, always accused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone's favor? Adelaide, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Jeanette, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden hair, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. No one crossed Marc, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the doves, killed the little parakeets, set the dogs on the cats, stripped the grapevines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the roses: he called his mother "old hag," too; sometimes insulted her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; frequently tore and spoiled her silk dresses; and he was still "her own darling." I didn't dare commit any fault: I strove to fulfill every wish; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one scolded Marc for cruelly striking me; and because I had turned against him to stop further irrational violence, I was loaded with general insults.
"It's unfair!" said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into the precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking again, and letting myself die.
My brain was in turmoil, and my heart burned! Yet in the darkness, through dense ignorance, the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question—why I suffered; now, after so many years, I finally understand.
I was a nuisance at the Yule mansion: I was like nobody there; I had nothing in common with Aunt Yule or her children. I know that had I been a genius, beautiful, careless, exciting child—though equally dependent and friendless—Aunt Yule would have endured my presence a lot better; her children would have been nicer; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.
Daylight began to escape the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the clouded afternoon was nearing twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the mansion; I grew colder and colder, and then my courage sank. My mood of humiliation, self-doubt, and depression, didn't seem the priority anymore. Everyone said I was wicked, and maybe I was. Suicide certainly was a sin: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chapel of Boulogne Church an inviting palce? In such vault I had been told did Uncle Yule lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mother's brother—that he had taken me in, as a parent-less infant, to his house; and that in his last moments he made a promise with Aunt Yule that she would raise me as one of her own children. Aunt Yule probably though she kept this promise; and she did, as well as her nature would allow her; but how could she really like an intruder not of her blood, and unconnected with her, after her husband's death? It must have been extremely troublesome to remind herself of the promise to be a replacement parent to a strange child she could not love.
A thought dawned on me. I was certain—more than certain—that if Uncle Yule had been alive, he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror—I began to remember what I had heard of dead people, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the one's doing the wrath and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Uncle Yule's spirit, harassed by the opression of his sister's child, might leave his abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and appear in front of me in this room. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful that any sign of violent grief might awaken a supernatural voice to comfort me. This idea, made me tremble. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly around the dark room; at that moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating through the curtains? No; moonlight was still, and this moved; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now say that this streak of light was, in fact, a gleam from a flashlight carried by some one across the lawn: but at the time, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was an angel from another world. My heart thudded, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I assumed was the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was scared, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running down the hall; the key turned, Agatha and Eva entered.
"Zoe, are you ill?" said Agatha.
"What a dreadful noise! it scared me silly" exclaimed Eva.
"Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!" I cried.
"What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?" again Agatha demanded.
"I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I was now holding Agatha's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
"She screamed out on purpose," declared Eva, in some disgust. "And what a scream! If she had been hurt it would be understandable, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks."
"What is all this?" demanded another voice; and Aunt Yule came down the hall, her dark hair flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. "Eva and Agatha, I believe I gave orders that Zoe Barton should be left in the red-room till I came to get her myself."
"Zoe screamed, ma'am," pleaded Agatha.
"Let her go," was the only answer. "Let go of Agatha's hand, child: you will not succeed in getting out using this plan. I don't reward faking, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only if you submit to perfect stillness, then I will let you out."
"O aunt! Forgive me! I I can't take it anymore—punish some other way! I will die if—"
"Silence!" I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely saw me as cunning, mischievous, wicked actress.
After Agatha and Eva left, Aunt Yule, impatient of my frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly pushed me back and locked me in, without further discussion. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, unconsciousness closed the scene.