CHAPTER XXXVIIIADA
Ada had gone home, after leaving the Dower House. The maid had told Michael that Miss Dixon had gone out about eight o’clock, in her bonnet and shawl, without any breakfast, and that she had had nothing to eat after her arrival at home. She had never, indeed, taken her things off; but was in exactly the same dress she had worn on her journey to Bradstane, which had been a long and fatiguing one. On going home from her interview with Eleanor, she went upstairs, partly in mechanical obedience to a remembered mandate of Miss Askam’s, partly automatically.
She never undressed, or even lay down on her bed. Part of the cruel night she spent in sitting on a chair by the wall, staring with blank eyes into the darkness, and repressing, half mechanically, the moans that rose to her lips. Another portion of her vigil was consumed in a restless wandering to and fro. Her chamber was over the empty parlour. No one would hear or heed her footsteps. At last, finding the darkness unbearable, she struck a match, and lighted two candles which stood on the dressing-table, and gazed about the room. It was her own bedroom that she was in, and the bed, beside which she sat, was the bed in which Ada Dixon hadslept—the same Ada Dixon who had felt indignant and insulted when her plain-spoken lover had told her that no honest girl required notice from her superiors. How very angry she had been when he said it. At this recollection she held her hands before her mouth to stifle a shriek. In this room, before that looking-glass, how many hours had she spent, trying the effect of this, that, or the other piece of finery; endeavouring to model her bonnets, her hats, her mantles, and her gowns upon those of her patroness, Magdalen Wynter? In that desk, standing upon the little round table in the corner, how many notes might be reposing, indited by Otho Askam? Notes slipped into her hand under Magdalen’s very eyes, when he had met her at Balder Hall; behind her unsuspecting father’s back, when she happened to be in the shop. Notes containing at first nothing but a rather heavy style of compliment, adapted to a taste not over-fastidious in such matters; tragic effusions, when read by the light of this present; ponderously comic, if viewed critically on their intrinsic merits as compositions.
When had it first seriously occurred to her that she might become Mrs. Askam, of Thorsgarth? Why, on that night, a hundred years ago, when there had been a grand concert, at which she had sung—when Miss Wynter had been flouted, and Ada flattered and complimented.
That was the night Roger had come in in such a fury, and carried her away. Roger—Roger—her thoughts wandered—who was Roger, and what had he to do with her? They were engaged to be married once—now—yet——Yes, and in November he was to come and see her.
Again a scream of wild laughter rose to her lips.Again she managed to stifle it, and again her mind reverted, whether she would or no, to her horror, her nightmare, the history of the last seven months. She recollected how Otho had appeared one day at the farmhouse where she was staying, and had paid her compliments; how she, grown bolder now that Magdalen was not present to overawe her, had, in a perkish manner, chaffed him about his engagement; to which he had retorted that he was not married yet, and that engagements might be broken off; and had appealed to her admiring cousins to know if Miss Dixon would not grace any sphere, even the most exalted. She remembered the gradually arising passion in his looks and his words, and how she herself, by one of those mysterious attractions which we see daily exemplified, had found herself spellbound by him in a manner which Roger could never have compassed if he had died for it. Temptation, kisses, promises—such profuse promises, appealing with instinctive acuteness to her vanity, her love of distinction—the strange eyes which magnetised and fascinated her; a brief, delirious dream—and since then, hell, by day and by night; not from the sense of defilement which would kill some natures—but, let the truth be written of her; she has her compeers in many places—from the scorching conviction that if, or when, she was found out, disgrace and contumely would be her portion.
She recalled the parting from Roger—when she had dismissed him in the pride of her heart, at a time when hope was still strong; and though she was beginning to have sickening qualms, yet she had been deluded enough to mistake his footstep behind her for Otho’s, and had had a wild idea that he had at last broken with Magdalen,and was coming to save and to claim her. Then her departure; the letters she had written, which had never been noticed; her aunt’s gradually awakened suspicions, and the tales she had told to stave off ruin and discovery; her journey home in fluttering hope, and desperate resolve; for a letter from home in which her father had expressed himself obscurely, had made her think Otho was at Thorsgarth. How she had made inquiries, and learnt that he had been gone a month or more. Then Eleanor, and her promises, and how she was to go and see her in the morning.
The night hours passed swiftly in this consuming vigil, and presently Ada saw that it was broad day, time, therefore, to go and see Miss Askam. That was her one thought now, that she was to go and see Miss Askam. And yet, her mind being more than a little wandering, she did not realise that though daylight, it was not yet the appointed time; but went downstairs, and let herself out of the house. The maid was at work in the kitchen; but she was a new-comer since Ada had left home, and did not therefore address her, or ask her any questions.
When Ada was out in the street she felt very weak and very strange, but she looked at a clock which stood over a public building, nearly opposite her father’s house. The hands pointed to eight; and then she remembered vaguely that Miss Askam had said nine; she must not go before nine.
She would take a little walk then, in the early freshness; she could not go back to that dreadful room. Besides, she had advanced a little up the town, into the square: there were Miss Askam’s blinds still down; it would not do to go there yet, though she longed to doso, and, had she been in her right mind, would have knocked without further ado, confident in the generous charity of the other woman.
So she wandered on, out of the town, faint and feeble for want of food and rest; crazy, and growing every moment more so, with woe, and fear, and wretchedness. Soon she was on a lonely road, stretching out to the north-east, with few houses, and, at that hour, scarcely a person on it. How beautiful it all was, in this golden morning sunshine, with the mists rising from the river, and the trees, clad in yellow and scarlet and russet, heavy and drooping in the windless air of a frosty October morning, precursor of a glorious autumn day!
Then she emerged from the shade of these trees, and found herself upon a wild upland road, with sweeps of country stretching far and wide around her; fields of yellow stubble, pastures, meadows; stretches of heavy wood; here and there the gleam of the river, and on every side, the wall of blue fells in the distance. The rough, uphill road lay before her, with scarce a house to be seen; and overhead a blue sky, from which fleecy white clouds were everywhere rolling back to show the fathomless, serene expanse.
‘Ay, but I’m so tired, so tired!’ Ada sighed, as she stumbled, and then recovered herself. ‘This is not being a lady; why does he not come home? If I had the carriage he promised me,—he said he would drive to Balder Hall with me, to see Miss Wynter, and show her what he thought of me, when we were married.’
Here she found herself opposite to a tiny house at the roadside, or rather, at a corner where four roads met; and at its door a woman stood, saw her, called out to her, and wished her good day.
‘Good day!’ said Ada, with a sudden affectation of her old mincing manner. ‘Might I beg a drink of water from you?’
The woman, who was kindly, though rough, would have had her come in and have some bread and milk, but she would not. She had quite forgotten Eleanor Askam by this time, and said she had far to go, and must not wait. The water was bestowed upon her, and she stood to drink it, holding the cup with her right hand, while her left rested upon the table. The woman looked at her, and drew her own conclusions from what she saw. Ada thanked her, with an affectation of superiority and patronage, and left the cottage. Its mistress stood watching her, as she turned to the right, along a high, toilsome road, and marched slowly and heavily along it.
‘Some poor crazy creature, whose hour is not far off. God pity her!’ she said within herself, and for a moment felt inclined to run after the girl, and insist on sheltering her. But the thought of her ‘man,’ and the trouble he would feel it to have such a person in the house deterred her. She went inside again, to her morning’s work.
Ada crept on, till she saw at a little distance, gray farm-buildings and a whitewashed house, with a long, low front; and it came across her mind that she could not walk any farther, but that she would go there, and ask them to let her rest till her carriage came, which was to meet her there, and take her home to lunch. And if they asked her who she was—why, the answer was simple—Mrs. Askam, of Thorsgarth. And in fancy, she saw curtseys dropped, and heard them begging her to be seated. For she was now quite crazy, only in this way; the connecting string in all her wild thoughts, was the vague recollection of real promises.
Before she arrived at the farm, she swerved to one side; her knees gave way, and in a little hollow in the wall, where there was a heap of stones, she sank down, feeling as if she were going to sleep; but the sleep became a long, deadly faint, and Ada Dixon, the petted beauty of the old town where she had been born and bred, who had been the plighted wife of a good man, lay in a heap by the roadside, with only the broad sky above her, with nothing but her mother earth on which to rest her dainty limbs.
And here she continued to lie, till Michael Langstroth rode up, having made inquiries on his way, and learnt from the woman at the cross-roads, that such a young woman as he described had passed.
‘Ay, doctor,’ said the woman, who knew him, though not Ada. ‘She was none fit to be walking on such roads at such times. I wanted her to bide a bit, and rest; but nay—she said she had far to go, and yon’s t’ road she took.’
Michael rode on, determined to find her, for Roger’s sake, for the sake of Eleanor, and out of his own pity for her condition. He was not long in coming within sight of the gray stone farm, and within a stone’s throw of it, the curve in the wall, and the figure that lay beneath it.
He muttered an inarticulate word, as he sprang from his horse, and stooped over her, and when he saw her face, recoiled for a moment. For a brief instant or two he could see nothing distinctly, a film was over his eyes, and a great sob in his throat, as he turned, and hung his horse’s bridle over the post of a gate in the wall He then stooped down, raised the lifeless figure in his arms, and carried her over the rough road to the farm door. The dogs, who were his friends, came out to welcome him,and then stopped, sniffing suspiciously at the skirts of the strange burden he bore. The farmer’s wife saw him, and ran forward, with upraised hands, ‘Lord ’a mercy, Dr. Langstroth—what is’t?’
‘Mrs. Nadin, you have promised many a time to do me a good turn; and I want a very good one doing now. Give a shelter to this poor thing till her trouble is over; it is a sad tale, and I’ll tell it you afterwards.’
Mrs. Nadin made no more ado. Langstroth had, according to her, saved her husband’s life two years ago, and with true north country love, she had been ever since burning to ‘pay him back again.’ She only stopped to look at the girl’s face, and to ejaculate Ada’s name. Then she called her daughter to her aid, and they whispered horror-struck conjectures to one another as they tended the wretched young woman.
And here, under the roof of these pitiful strangers, was that evening born, before his time, the son of Otho Askam—a child of sorrow, if ever one came into the world.