Every step affrighted her, the shadow of a moving branch upon the wall chilled her with terror; the voices of people who spoke seemed to pierce the naked nerve of her ear, and to sing through her head; even for a moment faces, kind and familiar, seemed to flicker or darken with direful meanings alien from their natures.
In this nervous condition old Mildred found her.
“I come, ma’am, to know what you’d wish to be done,” said she, standing at the door with her usual grim little courtesy.
“I don’t quite understand — done about what?” inquired she.
“I mean, ma’am, Tom said you asked him to be ready to drive you from here; but as master ha’n’t come back, and things is changed a bit here, I thought ye might wish to make a change, mayhap.”
“Oh, oh! thank you, Mrs. Tarnley; I forgot, I’ve been so frightened. Oh, Mrs. Tarnley, I wish I could cry — I’d be so much better, I’m sure, if I could cry — I feel my throat so odd and my head so confused — it seems so many days. If I could think of anything to make me cry.”
Mildred looked at her from the corners of her eyes darkly, as if with a hard heart, but I think she pitied her.
“That blind woman’s gone, the beast — I’m glad she’s away; and you’ll be the better o’ that, ma’am, I’m thinkin’. I was afeard o’ her a’most myself ever since last night; and Master Charles is gone, too, but he’ll be back soon.”
“He’ll come to-day?” she asked, in consternation.
“To-day, of course, ma’am — in an hour or less, I do suppose; and it would not be well done, I’m thinkin’, ma’am, for you to leave the Grange, till you see him again, for it’s like enough he’ll a’ changed his plans.”
“I was thinking so myself. I’d rather wait here to see him — he had so much to distract him that he may easily think differently by this time. I’m glad, Mrs. Tarnley, you think so, for now I feel confident I may wait for his return — I think I ought to wait — and thank you, Mrs. Tarnley, for advising me in the midst of my distractions.”
“I just speak my mind, ma’am, and counsel’s no command, as they say; and I never liked meddlers; and don’t love to burn my fingers in other people’s brewes: so ye’ll please to mind, ma’am, ’tis for your own ear I speak, and your own wit will judge; and I wouldn’t have Master Charles looking askew, nor like to be shent by him for what’s kindly meant to you — not that I owe much kindness nowhere, for since I could scour a platter I ever gave work for wage. So ye’ll please not tell Master Charles I counselled ye aught in the matter.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Tarnley, just as you wish.”
“Would you please wish anything to eat, ma’am?” inquired Mildred, relapsing into her dry, official manner.
“Nothing, Mildred — no, thanks.”
“Ye’ll lose heart, miss, if ye don’t eat — ye must eat.”
“Thanks, Mildred, by-and-by, perhaps.”
Mrs. Tarnley, like many worthy people, regarded eating as a simply mechanical process, and wondered why people affected a difficulty about it under any circumstances. Somewhat hard of heart, and with nerves of wire, she had no idea that a sufficient shock might rob one not only of appetite, but positively of the power of eating for days.
Alone, for one moment, Alice could not endure to be — haunted unintermittingly by the vague but intense dread of a return of the woman who had so nearly succeeded in murdering her, and with nerves shattered in that indescribable degree which even a strong man experiences for a long time after a murder has been attempted upon him perfidiously and by a surprise. The worst panic comes after an interval of many hours.
As the day waned, more miserably nervous she became, and more defined her terror of the Dutchwoman’s return. That straggling old house, with no less than four doors of entrance, favoured the alarms of her imagination. Often she thought of her kind old kinswoman, Lady Wyndale, and her proffered asylum at her snug house at Oulton.
But that was a momentary picture — no more. Miserable as she was at the Grange, until she had seen her husband, learned his plans, and knew what his wishes were, that loyal little wife could not dream of going to Oulton.
She remained there as the shades of evening darkened over the steep roof and solemn trees of Carwell Grange, and more and more grew the horror that deepened with darkness, and was aggravated and distracted by the continued absence of her husband.
In the sitting-room she stood, listening, with a beating heart. Every sound, which at another time would have been unheard, now thrilled her with hope or terror.
Old Dulcibella in the room was also frightened — more a great deal than she could account for. And even Mildred Tarnley — that hard and grim old lady — was touched by the influence of that contagious fear, and barred and locked the doors with jealous care, and even looked to the fastenings of the windows, and caught some faint shadows of that supernatural fear with which Alice Fairfield had come to regard the wicked woman out of whose hands she had escaped.
Now and then, when appealed to, she said a short word or two of reassurance respecting Charles Fairfield’s unaccountably prolonged absence. But the panic of the young lady in like manner on this point began to invade her in uncomfortable misgivings.
So uneasy had she grown that at last she dispatched Tom, when sunset had come without a sign of Charles Fairfield’s return, riding to Wykeford. Tom had now returned. A bootless errand it had proved. At Wykeford he learned that Charles Fairfield had been there — had been at Squire Rodney’s house and about the town, and made inquiries. His pursuit had been misdirected. At Wykeford is a House of Correction and Reformatory, which institution acts as a prison of ease to the county jail. But that jail is in the town of Hatherton, as Charles would have easily recollected if his rage had allowed him a moment to think. Tom, however, made no attempt further to pursue him, on conjecture, and had returned to Carwell Grange, no wiser than he went.
CHAPTER XIX.
HATHERTON.
Charles Fairfield, in true Fairfield wrath, had ridden at a hard pace, which helped to keep his blood up, all the way to the bridge of Wykeford. He had expected to overtake the magistrate easily before he reached that point, and if he had, who knows what might have happened next.
Baulked at Wykeford, and learning there how long a ride interposed before he could hope to reach him, he turned and followed in a somewhat changed mood.
He would himself bail that woman. The question, felony or no felony — bailable offence or not bailable — entered not his uninstructed head. Be she what she might, assassin — devil, he could not and would not permit her to lie in jail. Arrested in his own house, with many sufferings and one great wrong to upbraid him with — with rights, imaginary he insisted, but honestly believed in, perhaps, by her — with other rights, which his tortured heart could not deny, the melancholy rights which are founded on outlawry and disgrace, eleemosynary, but quite irresistible when pleaded with natures not lost to all good, and which proclaim the dreadful equity — that vice has its duties no less than virtue.
Baulked in his first violent impulse, Charles rode his hot horse quietly along the by-road that leads to Hatherton, over many a steep and through many a rut.
Yes, pleasant it would have been to “lick” that rascal Rodney, and upset his dog-cart into the ditch, and liberate the distressed damsel. But even Charles Fairfield began to perceive consequences, and to approve a more moderate course.
At Hatherton was there not Peregrine Hincks, the attorney who carried his brother, Harry Fairfield, whose course, any more than that of true love, did not always run smooth, through the short turns and breaks that disturbed it?
He would go straight to this artist in all manner of quips and cranks in parchment, and tell him what he wanted — the most foolish thing perhaps in the world, to undo that which his good fortune had done for him, and let loose again his trouble.
Scandal! What did the defiant soul of a Fairfield care for scandal? Impulsive, reckless, affectionate, not ungenerous �
� all considerations were lost in the one compunctious feeling.
Two hours later he was in the office of Mr. Peregrine Hincks, who listened to his statement with a shrewd inflexibility of face. He knew as much as Harry Fairfield did of the person who was now under the turnkey’s tutelage. But Charles fancied him quite in the dark, and treated the subject accordingly.
“We’ll send down to the jail, and learn what she’s committed for, but two will be necessary. Who will execute the recognizance with you?”
“I’m certain Harry will do it in a moment,” said Charles.
The attorney was very sure that Harry would do no such thing. But it was not necessary to discuss that particular point, nor to insinuate officiously his ideas about the county scandal which would follow his interposition in favour of a prisoner committed upon a charge involving an attempt upon the life of his wife, for the information brought back from the prison was such as to convince the attorney that bail could not be accepted in the case.
On learning this, Charles’ wrath returned. He stood for a time at the chimneypiece, examining in silence a candlestick that stood there, and then to the window he went, with a haggard, angry face, and looked out for a while with his hands in his pockets.
“Very well. So much the worse for Rodney,” said he suddenly. “I told you my sole motive was to snub that fellow. He chose to make an arrest in my house — his d —— d impertinence! — without the slightest reference to me, and I made up my mind, if I could, to let his prisoner go. That fellow wants to be kicked — I don’t care twopence about anything else, but it’s all one — I’ll find some other way.”
“You’d better have a glass of sherry, sir; you’re a little tired, and a biscuit.”
“I’ll have nothing, thanks, till I — till I — what was I going to say? Time enough; I have lots to do at home — a great deal, Mr. Hincks — and my head aches. I am tired, but I won’t mind the wine, thank you, my head is too bad. If I could just clear it of two or three things I’d be all right, and rest a little. I’ve been overworked, and I’ll ride over here tomorrow — that will do — and we’ll talk it over; and I don’t choose the wretched, crazy woman to be shut up in prison, because that stupid prig, Rodney, pleases to say she’s sane, and would like to hang her, just because she was arrested at Carwell; and — and as you say, of course, if she is insane she is best out of the way; but there are ways of doing things, and I won’t be bullied by that vulgar snob. By —— if I had caught him to-day I’d have broken his neck, I believe.”
“Glad you did not meet him, sir — a row at any time brings one into mischief, but an interference with the course of law — don’t you see — a very serious affair, indeed!”
“Well, see — yes, I suppose so, and there was just another thing. Believing, as I do, that wretched person quite mad — don’t you see? — it would be very hard to let her — to let her half starve there where they’ve put her — don’t you think? — and I don’t care to go down to the place there, and all that; and if you’d just manage to let her have this — it’s all I can do just now — but — but its happening at my house — although I’m not a bit to blame, puts it on me in a way, and I think I can’t do less than this.”
He handed a banknote to the attorney, and was looking all the time on a brief that lay on the table.
Mr. Hincks, the respectable attorney, was a little shy, also, as he took it.
“I’m to say you send it to — what’s her name, by-the-by?” he asked.
“Bertha Velderkaust, but you need not mention me — only say it was sent to her — that’s all. I’m so vexed, because as you may suppose, I had particular reasons for wishing to keep quiet, and I was staying there at the Grange, you know — Carwell — and thought I might keep quiet for a few weeks; and that wretched maniac comes down there while I was for a few days absent, and in one of her fits makes an attack on a member of my family; and so my little hiding place is disclosed, for of course such a fracas will be heard of, — it is awfully provoking — I’m rather puzzled to know where to go.”
Charles ceased, with a faint, dreary laugh, and the attorney looked at his banknote, which he held by the corners, as the mate, in Mudford’s fine story, might at the letter which Vanderdecken wished to send to his long-lost wife in Amsterdam.
It was not, however, clear to him that he had any very good excuse for refusing to do this trifling kindness for the brother of his quarrelsome and litigious client, Harry Fairfield, who, although he eschewed costs himself, laid them pretty heavily upon others, and was a valuable feeder for Mr. Hincks’ office.
This little commission, therefore, accepted, the attorney saw his visitor downstairs. He had already lighted a candle, and in its light he thought he never saw a man upon his legs look so ill as Charles, and the hand which he gave Mr. Hincks at the steps was dry and burning.
“It’s a long ride, sir, to Carwell,” the attorney hesitated.
“The horse has had some oats, thanks, down here,” and he nodded toward the Plume of Feathers at which he had put up his beast, “and I shan’t be long getting over the ground.”
And without turning about, or a look over his shoulder, he sauntered away, in the rising moonlight, toward the little inn.
CHAPTER XX.
THE WELCOME.
Charles rode his horse slowly homeward. The moon got up before he reached the wild expanse of Cressley Common, a wide sea of undulating heath, with here and there a grey stone peeping above its surface in the moonlight like a distant sail.
Charles was feverish — worn out in body and mind — literally. Some men more than others are framed to endure misery, and live on, and on, and on in despair. Is this melancholy strength better, or the weakness that faints under the first strain of the rack? Happy that at the longest it cannot be for very long — happy that “man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live,” seeing that he is “full of misery.”
Charles was conscious only of extreme fatigue; that for days he had eaten little and rested little, and that his short snatches of sleep, harassed by the repetition of his waking calculations and horrors, tired rather than refreshed him.
When fever is brewing, just as electric lights glimmer from the sullen mask of cloud on the eve of a storm, there come sometimes odd flickerings that seem to mock and warn.
Every overworked man, who has been overtaken by fever in the midst of his toil and complications, knows well the kind of tricks his brain has played him on the verge of that chaos.
Charles put his hand to his breast, and felt in his pocket for a letter, the appearance of which was sharp and clear on his retina as if he had seen it but a moment before.
“What have I done with it?” he asked himself— “the letter Hincks gave me?”
He searched his pockets for it, a letter of which this picture was so bright — purely imaginary! He was going to turn about and search the track he had traversed for it; but he bethought him, “To whom was the letter written?” No answer could he find. “To whom?” To no one — nothing — an imagination. Conscious on a sudden, he was scared.
“I want a good rest — I want some sleep — waking dreams. This is the way fellows go mad. What the devil can have put it into my head?”
Now rose before him the tall trees that gather as you approach the vale of Carwell, and soon the steep gables and chimneys of the Grange glimmered white among their boughs.
There in his mind, as unaccountably, was the fancy that he had met and spoken with his father, old Squire Harry, at the Catstone, as he crossed the moor.
“I’ll give his message — yes, I’ll give your message.”
And he thought what possessed him to come out without his hat, and he looked whiter than ever.
And then he thought, “What brought him there?”
And then, “What was his message?”
Again a shock, a chasm — his brain had mocked him.
Dreadful when that potent servant begins to mutiny, and instead of honest work
for its master finds pastime for itself in fearful sport.
“My God! what am I thinking of?” he said, with a kind of chill, looking back over his shoulder.
His tired horse was plucking a mouthful of grass that grew at the foot of a tree.
“We are both used up,” he said, letting his horse, at a quicker pace, pursue its homeward path. “Poor fellow, you are tired as well as I. I’ll be all right, I dare say, in the morning if I could only sleep. Something wrong — something a little wrong — that sleep will cure — all right tomorrow.”
He looked up as he passed toward the windows of his and Alice’s room. When he was out a piece of the shutter was always open. But if so tonight there was no light in the room, and with a shock and a dreadful imperfection of recollection, the scene which occurred on the night past returned.
“Yes, my God! so it was,” he said, as he stopped at the yard gate. “Alice — I forget — did I see Alice after that, did I — did they tell me — what is it?”
He dismounted, and felt as if he were going to faint. His finger was on the latch, but he had not courage to raise it. Vain was his effort to remember. Painted in hues of light was that dreadful crisis before his eyes, but how had it ended? Was he going quite mad?
“My God help me,” he muttered again and again. “Is there anything bad? I can’t recall it. Is there anything very bad?”
“Open the door, it is he, I’m sure, I heard the horse,” cried the clear voice of Alice from within.
“Yes, I, it’s I,” he cried in a strange rapture.
And in another moment the door was open, and Charles had clasped his wife to his heart.
“Darling, darling, I’m so glad. You’re quite well?” he almost sobbed.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 505
