or the husband more.
"I went up the street--and came back. I went down the street--and
came back. I tried it a third time, and went round and round and
round--and came back. It was not to be done The house held me
chained to it like a dog to his kennel. I couldn't keep away from
it. For the life of me, I couldn't keep away from it.
"A company of gay young men and women passed me, just as I was
going to let myself in again. They were in a great hurry. 'Step
out,' says one of the men; 'the theatre's close by, and we shall
be just in time for the farce.' I turned about and followed them.
Having been piously brought up, I had never been inside a theatre
in my life. It struck me that I might get taken, as it were, out
of myself, if I saw something that was quite strange to me, and
heard something which would put new thoughts into my mind.
"They went in to the pit; and I went in after them.
"The thing they called the farce had begun. Men and women came on
to the stage, turn and turn about, and talked, and went off
again. Before long all the people about me in the pit were
laughing and clapping their hands. The noise they made angered
me. I don't know how to describe the state I was in. My eyes
wouldn't serve me, and my ears wouldn't serve me, to see and to
hear what the rest of them were seeing and hearing. There must
have been something, I fancy, in my mind that got itself between
me and what was going on upon the stage. The play looked fair
enough on the surface; but there was danger and death at the
bottom of it. The players were talking and laughing to deceive
the people--with murder in their minds all the time. And nobody
knew it but me--and my tongue was tied when I tried to tell the
others. I got up, and ran out. The moment I was in the street my
steps turned back of themselves on the way to the house. I called
a cab, and told the man to drive (as far as a shilling would take
me) the opposite way. He put me down--I don't know where. Across
the street I saw an inscription in letters of flame over an open
door. The man said it was a dancing-place. Dancing was as new to
me as play-going. I had one more shilling left; and I paid to go
in, and see what a sight of the dancing would do for me. The
light from the ceiling poured down in this place as if it was all
on fire. The crashing of the music was dreadful. The whirling
round and round of men and women in each other's arms was quite
maddening to see. I don't know what happened to me here. The
great blaze of light from the ceiling turned blood-red on a
sudden. The man standing in front of the musicians waving a stick
took the likeness of Satan, as seen in the picture in our family
Bible at home. The whirling men and women went round and round,
with white faces like the faces of the dead, and bodies robed in
winding-sheets. I screamed out with the terror of it; and some
person took me by the arm and put me outside the door. The
darkness did me good: it was comforting and delicious--like a
cool hand laid on a hot head. I went walking on through it,
without knowing where; composing my mind with the belief that I
had lost my way, and that I should find myself miles distant from
home when morning dawned. After some time I got too weary to go
on; and I sat me down to rest on a door-step. I dozed a bit, and
woke up. When I got on my feet to go on again, I happened to turn
my head toward the door of the house. The number on it was the
same number an as ours. I looked again. And behold, it was our
steps I had been resting on. The door was our door.
"All my doubts and all my struggles dropped out of my mind when I
made that discovery. There was no mistaking what this perpetual
coming back to the house meant. Resist it as I might, it was to
be.
"I opened the street door and went up stairs, and heard him
sleeping his heavy sleep, exactly as I had heard him when I went
out. I sat down on my bed and took off my bonnet, quite quiet in
myself, because I knew it was to be. I damped the towel, and put
it ready, and took a turn in the room.
"It was just the dawn of day. The sparrows were chirping among
the trees in the square hard by.
"I drew up my blind; the faint light spoke to me as if in words,
'Do it now, before I get brighter, and show too much.'
"I listened. The friendly silence had a word for me too: 'Do it
now, and trust the secret to Me.'
"I waited till the church clock chimed before striking the hour.
At the first stroke--without touching the lock of his door,
without setting foot in his room--I had the towel over his face.
Before the last stroke he had ceased struggling. When the hum of
the bell through the morning silence was still and dead, _he_ was
still and dead with it.
11.
"The rest of this history is counted in my mind by four
days--Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. After that it all
fades off like, and the new years come with a strange look, being
the years of a new life.
"What about the old life first? What did I feel, in the horrid
quiet of the morning, when I had done it?
"I don't know what I felt. I can't remember it, or I can't tell
it, I don't know which. I can write the history of the four days,
and that's all.
"Wednesday.--I gave the alarm toward noon. Hours before, I had
put things straight and fit to be seen. I had only to call for
help, and to leave the people to do as they pleased. The
neighbors came in, and then the police. They knocked, uselessly,
at his door. Then they broke it open, and found him dead in his
bed.
"Not the ghost of a suspicion of me entered the mind of any one.
There was no fear of human justice finding me out: my one
unutterable dread was dread of an Avenging Providence.
I had a short sleep that night, and a dream, in which I did the
deed over again. For a time my mind was busy with thoughts of
confessing to the police, and of giving myself up. If I had not
belonged to a respectable family, I should have done it. From
generation to generation there had been no stain on our good
name. It would be death to my father, and disgrace to all my
family, if I owned what I had done, and suffered for it on the
public scaffold. I prayed to be guided; and I had a revelation,
toward morning, of what to do.
"I was commanded, in a vision, to open the Bible, and vow on it
to set my guilty self apart among my innocent fellow-creatures
from that day forth; to live among them a separate and silent
life, to dedicate the use of my speech to the language of prayer
only, offered up in the solitude of my own chamber when no human
ear could hear me. Alone, in the morning, I saw the vision, and
vowed the vow. No human ear _has_ heard me from that time. No
human ear _will_ hear me, to the day of my death.
"Thursday.--The people came to speak to me, as usual. They found
me dumb.
"What had happened to me in the
past, when my head had been hurt,
and my speech affected by it, gave a likelier look to my dumbness
than it might have borne in the case of another person. They took
me back again to the hospital. The doctors were divided in
opinion. Some said the shock of what had taken place in the
house, coming on the back of the other shock, might, for all they
knew, have done the mischief. And others said, 'She got her
speech again after the accident; there has been no new injury
since that time; the woman is shamming dumb, for some purpose of
her own.' I let them dispute it as they liked. All human talk was
nothing now to me. I had set myself apart among my
fellow-creatures; I had begun my separate and silent life.
"Through all this time the sense of a coming punishment hanging
over me never left my mind. I had nothing to dread from human
justice. The judgment of an Avenging Providence--there was what I
was waiting for.
"Friday--They held the inquest. He had been known for years past
as an inveterate drunkard, he had been seen overnight going home
in liquor; he had been found locked up in his room, with the key
inside the door, and the latch of the window bolted also. No
fire-place was in this garret; nothing was disturbed or altered:
nobody by human possibility could have got in. The doctor
reported that he had died of congestion of the lungs; and the
jury gave their verdict accordingly.
12.
"Saturday.--Marked forever in my calendar as the memorable day on
which the judgment descended on me. Toward three o'clock in the
afternoon--in the broad sunlight, under the cloudless sky, with
hundreds of innocent human creatures all around me--I, Hester
Dethridge, saw, for the first time, the Appearance which is
appointed to haunt me for the rest of my life.
"I had had a terrible night. My mind felt much as it had felt on
the evening when I had gone to the play. I went out to see what
the air and the sunshine and the cool green of trees and grass
would do for me. The nearest place in which I could find what I
wanted was the Regent's Park. I went into one of the quiet walks
in the middle of the park, where the horses and carriages are not
allowed to go, and where old people can sun themselves, and
children play, without danger.
"I sat me down to rest on a bench. Among the children near me was
a beautiful little boy, playing with a brand-new toy--a horse and
wagon. While I was watching him busily plucking up the blades of
grass and loading his wagon with them, I felt for the first
time--what I have often and often felt since--a creeping chill
come slowly over my flesh, and then a suspicion of something
hidden near me, which would steal out and show itself if I looked
that way.
"There was a big tree hard by. I looked toward the tree, and
waited to see the something hidden appear from behind it.
"The Thing stole out, dark and shadowy in the pleasant sunlight.
At first I saw only the dim figure of a woman. After a little it
began to get plainer, brightening from within
outward--brightening, brightening, brightening, till it set
before me the vision of MY OWN SELF, repeated as if I was
standing before a glass--the double of myself, looking at me with
my own eyes. I saw it move over the grass. I saw it stop behind
the beautiful little boy. I saw it stand and listen, as I had
stood and listened at the dawn of morning, for the chiming of the
bell before the clock struck the hour. When it heard the stroke
it pointed down to the boy with my own hand; and it said to me,
with my own voice, 'Kill him.'
"A time passed. I don't know whether it was a minute or an hour.
The heavens and the earth disappeared from before me. I saw
nothing but the double of myself, with the pointing hand. I felt
nothing but the longing to kill the boy.
"Then, as it seemed, the heavens and the earth rushed back upon
me. I saw the people near staring in surprise at me, and
wondering if I was in my right mind.
"I got, by main force, to my feet; I looked, by main force, away
from the beautiful boy; I escaped, by main force, from the sight
of the Thing, back into the streets. I can only describe the
overpowering strength of the temptation that tried me in one way.
It was like tearing the life out of me to tear myself from
killing the boy. And what it was on this occasion it has been
ever since. No remedy against it but in that torturing effort,
and no quenching the after-agony but by solitude and prayer.
"The sense of a coming punishment had hung over me. And the
punishment had come. I had waited for the judgment of an Avenging
Providence. And the judgment was pronounced. With pious David I
could now say, Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have
cut me off."
--------
Arrived at that point in the narrative, Geoffrey looked up from
the manuscript for the first time. Some sound outside the room
had disturbed him. Was it a sound in the passage?
He listened. There was an interval of silence. He looked back
again at the Confession, turning over the last leaves to count
how much was left of it before it came to an end.
After relating the circumstances under which the writer had
returned to domestic service, the narrative was resumed no more.
Its few remaining pages were occupied by a fragmentary journal.
The brief entries referred to the various occasions on which
Hester Dethridge had again and again seen the terrible apparition
of herself, and had again and again resisted the homicidal frenzy
roused in her by the hideous creation of her own distempered
brain. In the effort which that resistance cost her lay the
secret of her obstinate determination to insist on being freed
from her work at certain times, and to make it a condition with
any mistress who employed her that she should be privileged to
sleep in a room of her own at night. Having counted the pages
thus filled, Geoffrey turned back to the place at which he had
left off, to read the manuscript through to the end.
As his eyes rested on the first line the noise in the
passage--intermitted for a moment only--disturbed him again.
This time there was no doubt of what the sound implied. He heard
her hurried footsteps; he heard her dreadful cry. Hester
Dethridge had woke in her chair in the pallor, and had discovered
that the Confession was no longer in her own hands.
He put the manuscript into the breast-pocket of his coat. On
_this_ occasion his reading had been of some use to him. Needless
to go on further with it. Needless to return to the Newgate
Calendar. The problem was solved.
As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a
terrible smile. While the woman's Conf ession was in his pocket
the woman herself was in his power. "If she wants it back," he
said, "she must get it on my terms." With that resolution, he
opened the door, and me
t Hester Dethridge, face to face, in the
passage.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIFTH.
THE SIGNS OF THE END.
THE servant, appearing the next morning in Anne's room with the
breakfast tray, closed the door with an air of mystery, and
announced that strange things were going on in the house.
"Did you hear nothing last night, ma'am," she asked, "down stairs
in the passage?"
"I thought I heard some voices whispering outside my room," Anne
replied. "Has any thing happened?"
Extricated from the confusion in which she involved it, the
girl's narrative amounted in substance to this. She had been
startled by the sudden appearance of her mistress in the passage,
staring about her wildly, like a woman who had gone out of her
senses. Almost at the same moment "the master" had flung open the
drawing-room door. He had caught Mrs. Dethridge by the arm, had
dragged her into the room, and had closed the door again. After
the two had remained shut up together for more than half an hour,
Mrs. Dethridge had come out, as pale as ashes, and had gone up
stairs trembling like a person in great terror. Some time later,
when the servant was in bed, but not asleep, she had seen a light
under her door, in the narrow wooden passage which separated
Anne's bedroom from Hester's bedroom, and by which she obtained
access to her own little sleeping-chamber beyond. She had got out
of bed; had looked through the keyhole; and had seen "the master"
and Mrs. Dethridge standing together examining the walls of the
passage. "The master" had laid his hand upon the wall, on the
side of his wife's room, and had looked at Mrs. Dethridge. And
Mrs. Dethridge had looked back at him, and had shaken her head.
Upon that he had said in a whisper (still with his hand on the
wooden wall), "Not to be done here?" And Mrs. Dethridge had
shaken her head. He had considered a moment, and had whispered
again, "The other room will do! won't it?" And Mrs. Dethridge had
nodded her head--and so they had parted. That was the story of
the night. Early in the morning, more strange things had
happened. The master had gone out, with a large sealed packet in
his hand, covered with many stamps; taking his own letter to the
post, instead of sending the servant with it as usual. On his
return, Mrs. Dethridge had gone out next, and had come back with
something in a jar which she had locked up in her own
sitting-room. Shortly afterward, a working-man had brought a
bundle of laths, and some mortar and plaster of Paris, which had
been carefully placed together in a corner of the scullery. Last,
and most remarkable in the series of domestic events, the girl
had received permission to go home and see her friends in the
country, on that very day; having been previously informed, when
she entered Mrs. Dethridge's service, that she was not to expect
to have a holiday granted to her until after Christmas. Such were
the strange things which had happened in the house since the
previous night. What was the interpretation to be placed on them?
The right interpretation was not easy to discover.
Some of the events pointed apparently toward coming repairs or
alterations in the cottage. But what Geoffrey could have to do
with them (being at the time served with a notice to quit), and
why Hester Dethridge should have shown the violent agitation
which had been described, were mysteries which it was impossible
to penetrate.
Anne dismissed the girl with a little present and a few kind
words. Under other circumstances, the incomprehensible
proceedings in the house might have made her seriously uneasy.
But her mind was now occupied by more pressing anxieties.
Blanche's second letter (received from Hester Dethridge on the
previous evening) informed her that Sir Patrick persisted in his
resolution, and that he and his niece might be expected, come
what might of it, to present themselves at the cottage on that
day.
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