TOWARD sunset, Lady Holchester’s carriage drew up before the gate of the cottage.
Three persons occupied the carriage: Lady Holchester, her eldest son (now Lord Holchester), and Sir Patrick Lundie.
“Will you wait in the carriage, Sir Patrick?” said Julius. “Or will you come in?”
“I will wait. If I can be of the least use toher,, send for me instantly. In the mean time don’t forget to make the stipulation which I have suggested. It is the one certain way of putting your brother’s real feeling in this matter to the test.”
The servant had rung the bell without producing any result. He rang again. Lady Holchester put a question to Sir Patrick.
“If I have an opportunity of speaking to my son’s wife alone,” she said, “have you any message to give?”
Sir Patrick produced a little note.
“May I appeal to your ladyship’s kindness to give her this?” The gate was opened by the servant-girl, as Lady Holchester took the note. “Remember,” reiterated Sir Patrick, earnestly “if I can be of the smallest service to her—don’t think of my position with Mr. Delamayn. Send for me at once.”
Julius and his mother were conducted into the drawing-room. The girl informed them that her master had gone up stairs to lie down, and that he would be with them immediately.
Both mother and son were too anxious to speak. Julius wandered uneasily about the room. Some books attracted his notice on a table in the corner—four dirty, greasy volumes, with a slip of paper projecting from the leaves of one of them, and containing this inscription, “With Mr. Perry’s respects.” Julius opened the volume. It was the ghastly popular record of Criminal Trials in England, called the Newgate Calendar. Julius showed it to his mother.
“Geoffrey’s taste in literature!” he said, with a faint smile.
Lady Holchester signed to him to put the book back.
“You have seen Geoffrey’s wife already—have you not?” she asked.
There was no contempt now in her tone when she referred to Anne. The impression produced on her by her visit to the cottage, earlier in the day, associated Geoffrey’s wife with family anxieties of no trivial kind. She might still (for Mrs. Glenarm’s sake) be a woman to be disliked—but she was no longer a woman to be despised.
“I saw her when she came to Swanhaven,” said Julius. “I agree with Sir Patrick in thinking her a very interesting person.”
“What did Sir Patrick say to you about Geoffrey this afternoon—while I was out of the room?”
“Only what he said toyou.He thought their position toward each other here a very deplorable one. He considered that the reasons were serious for our interfering immediately.”
“Sir Patrick’s own opinion, Julius, goes farther than that.”
“He has not acknowledged it, that I know of.”
“Howcanhe acknowledge it—to us?”
The door opened, and Geoffrey entered the room.
Julius eyed him closely as they shook hands. His eyes were bloodshot; his face was flushed; his utterance was thick—the look of him was the look of a man who had been drinking hard.
“Well?” he said to his mother. “What brings you back?”
“Julius has a proposal to make to you,” Lady Holchester answered. “I approve of it; and I have come with him.”
Geoffrey turned to his brother.
“What can a rich man like you want with a poor devil like me?” he asked.
“I want to do you justice, Geoffrey—if you will help me, by meeting me half-way. Our mother has told you about the will?”
“I’m not down for a half-penny in the will. I expected as much. Go on.”
“You are wrong—youaredown in it. There is liberal provision made for you in a codicil. Unhappily, my father died without signing it. It is needless to say that I consider it binding on me for all that. I am ready to do for you what your father would have done for you. And I only ask for one concession in return.”
“What may that be?”
“You are living here very unhappily, Geoffrey, with your wife.”
“Who says so? I don’t, for one.”
Julius laid his hand kindly on his brother’s arm.
“Don’t trifle with such a serious matter as this,” he said. “Your marriage is, in every sense of the word, a misfortune—not only to you but to your wife. It is impossible that you can live together. I have come here to ask you to consent to a separation. Do that—and the provision made for you in the unsigned codicil is yours. What do you say?”
Geoffrey shook his brother’s hand off his arm.
“I say—No!” he answered.
Lady Holchester interfered for the first time.
“Your brother’s generous offer deserves a better answer than that,” she said.
“My answer,” reiterated Geoffrey, “is—No!”
He sat between them with his clenched fists resting on his knees—absolutely impenetrable to any thing that either of them could say.
“In your situation,” said Julius, “a refusal is sheer madness. I won’t accept it.”
“Do as you like about that. My mind’s made up. I won’t let my wife be taken away from me. Here she stays.”
The brutal tone in which he had made that reply roused Lady Holchester’s indignation.
“Take care!” she said. “You are not only behaving with the grossest ingratitude toward your brother—you are forcing a suspicion into your mother’s mind. You have some motive that you are hiding from us.”
He turned on his mother with a sudden ferocity which made Julius spring to his feet. The next instant his eyes were on the ground, and the devil that possessed him was quiet again.
“Some motive I’m hiding from you?” he repeated, with his head down, and his utterance thicker than ever. “I’m ready to have my motive posted all over London, if you like. I’m fond of her.”
He looked up as he said the last words. Lady Holchester turned away her head—recoiling from her own son. So overwhelming was the shock inflicted on her that even the strongly rooted prejudice which Mrs. Glenarm had implanted in her mind yielded to it. At that moment she absolutely pitied Anne!
“Poor creature!” said Lady Holchester.
He took instant offense at those two words. “I won’t have my wife pitied by any body.” With that reply, he dashed into the passage; and called out, “Anne! come down!”
Her soft voice answered; her light footfall was heard on the stairs. She came into the room. Julius advanced, took her hand, and held it kindly in his. “We are having a little family discussion,” he said, trying to give her confidence. “And Geoffrey is getting hot over it, as usual.”
Geoffrey appealed sternly to his mother.
“Look at her!” he said. “Is she starved? Is she in rags? Is she covered with bruises?” He turned to Anne. “They have come here to propose a separation. They both believe I hate you. I don’t hate you. I’m a good Christian. I owe it to you that I’m cut out of my father’s will. I forgive you that. I owe it to you that I’ve lost the chance of marrying a woman with ten thousand a year. I forgive youthat.I’m not a man who does things by halves. I said it should be my endeavor to make you a good husband. I said it was my wish to make it up. Well! I am as good as my word. And what’s the consequence? I am insulted. My mother comes here, and my brother comes here—and they offer me money to part from you. Money be hanged! I’ll be beholden to nobody. I’ll get my own living. Shame on the people who interfere between man and wife! Shame!—that’s what I say—shame!”
Anne looked, for an explanation, from her husband to her husband’s mother.
“Have you proposed a separation between us?” she asked.
“Yes—on terms of the utmost advantage to my son; arranged with every possible consideration toward you. Is there any objection on your side?”
“Oh, Lady Holchester! is it necessary to ask me? What does he say?”
“He has refused.”
“Refused!”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t go back from my word; I stick to what I said this morning. It’s my endeavor to make you a good husband. It’s my wish to make it up.” He paused, and then added his last reason: “I’m fond of you.”
Their eyes met as he said it to her. Julius felt Anne’s hand suddenly tighten round his. The desperate grasp of the frail cold fingers, the imploring terror in the gentle sensitive face as it slowly turned his way, said to him as if in words, “Don’t leave me friendless to-night!”
“If you both stop here till domesday,” said Geoffrey, “you’ll get nothing more out of me. You have had my reply.”
With that, he seated himself doggedly in a corner of the room; waiting—ostentatiously waiting—for his mother and his brother to take their leave. The position was serious. To argue the matter with him that night was hopeless. To invite Sir Patrick’s interference would only be to provoke his savage temper to a new outbreak. On the other hand, to leave the helpless woman, after what had passed, without another effort to befriend her, was, in her situation, an act of downright inhumanity, and nothing less. Julius took the one way out of the difficulty that was left—the one way worthy of him as a compassionate and an honorable man.
“We will drop it for to-night, Geoffrey,” he said. “But I am not the less resolved, in spite of all that you have said, to return to the subject to-morrow. It would save me some inconvenience—a second journey here from town, and then going back again to my engagements—if I staid with you to-night. Can you give me a bed?”
A look flashed on him from Anne, which thanked him as no words could have thanked him.
“Give you a bed?” repeated Geoffrey. He checked himself, on the point of refusing. His mother was watching him; his wife was watching him—and his wife knew that the room above them was a room to spare. “All right!” he resumed, in another tone, with his eye on his mother. “There’s my empty room up stairs. Have it, if you like. You won’t find I’ve changed my mind to-morrow—but that’s your look-out. Stop here, if the fancy takes you. I’ve no objection. It don’t matter to Me.—Will you trust his lordship under my roof?” he added, addressing his mother. “I might have some motive that I’m hiding from you, you know!” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Anne. “Go and tell old Dummy to put the sheets on the bed. Say there’s a live lord in the house—she’s to send in something devilish good for supper!” He burst fiercely into a forced laugh. Lady Holchester rose at the moment when Anne was leaving the room. “I shall not be here when you return,” she said. “Let me bid you good-night.”
She shook hands with Anne—giving her Sir Patrick’s note, unseen, at the same moment. Anne left the room. Without addressing another word to her second son, Lady Holchester beckoned to Julius to give her his arm. “You have acted nobly toward your brother,” she said to him. “My one comfort and my one hope, Julius, are in you.” They went out together to the gate, Geoffrey following them with the key in his hand. “Don’t be too anxious,” Julius whispered to his mother. “I will keep the drink out of his way to-night—and I will bring you a better account of him to-morrow. Explain every thing to Sir Patrick as you go home.”
He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother—but he was seriously uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius. For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey’s mind. They went back into the drawing-room. “What will you have to drink?” said Geoffrey.
“Nothing.”
“You won’t keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?”
“No. You have had enough brandy-and-water.”
After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey abruptly agreed with Julius “I look like it,” he said. “I’ll soon put that right.” He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round his head. “What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready? Liberty Hall here. I’ve taken to cultivating my mind—-I’m a reformed character, you know, now I’m a married man. You do what you like. I shall read.”
He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.
“You won’t cultivate your mind,” he said, “with such a book as that. Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in every sense of the word.”
“It will do for me. I don’t know good English when I see it.”
With that frank acknowledgment—to which the great majority of his companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the slightest injustice to the present state of English education—Geoffrey drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record of crime.
The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise, that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book. Instead of beginning at the first page, he ran the leaves through his fingers, and turned them down at certain places, before he entered on his reading. If Julius had looked over his brother’s shoulder, instead of only looking at him across the table, he would have seen that Geoffrey passed by all the lighter crimes reported in the Calendar, and marked for his own private reading the cases of murder only.
THE night had advanced. It was close on twelve o’clock when Anne heard the servant’s voice, outside her bedroom door, asking leave to speak with her for a moment.
“What is it?”
“The gentleman down stairs wishes to see you, ma’am.”
“Do you mean Mr. Delamayn’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“Where is Mr. Delamayn?”
“Out in the garden, ma’am.”
Anne went down stairs, and found Julius alone in the drawing-room.
“I am sorry to disturb you,” he said. “I am afraid Geoffrey is ill. The landlady has gone to bed, I am told—and I don’t know where to apply for medical assistance. Do you know of any doctor in the neighborhood?”
Anne, like Julius, was a perfect stranger to the neighborhood. She suggested making inquiry of the servant. On speaking to the girl, it turned out that she knew of a medical man, living within ten minutes’ walk of the cottage. She could give plain directions enabling any person to find the place—but she was afraid, at that hour of the night and in that lonely neighborhood, to go out by herself.
“Is he seriously ill?” Anne asked.
“He is in such a state of nervous irritability,” said Julius, “that he can’t remain still for two moments together in the same place. It began with incessant restlessness while he was reading here. I persuaded him to go to bed. He couldn’t lie still for an instant—he came down again, burning with fever, and more restless than ever. He is out in the garden in spite of every thing I could do to prevent him; trying, as he says, to ‘run it off.’ It appears to be serious tome.. Come and judge for yourself.”
He led Anne into the next room; and, opening the shutter, pointed to the garden.
The clouds had cleared off; the night was fine. The clear starlight showed Geoffrey, stripped to his shirt and drawers, running round and round the garden. He apparently believed himself to be contending at the Fulham foot-race. At times, as the white figure circled round and round in the star-light, they heard him cheering for “the South.” The slackening thump of his feet on the ground, the heavier and heavier gasps in which he drew his breath, as he passed the window, gave warning that his strength was failing him. Exhaustion, if it led to no worse consequences, would force him to return to the house. In the state of his brain at that moment who could say what the result might be, if medical help was not called in?
“I will go for the doctor,” said Julius, “if you don’t mind my leaving you.”
It was impossible for Anne to set any apprehensions of her own against the plain necessity for summoning assistance. They found the key of the gate in the pocket of Geoffrey’s coat up stairs. Anne went with Julius to let him out. “How can I thank you!” she said, gratefully. “What should I have done withoutyou!”
“I won’t be a moment longer than I can help,” he answered, and left her.
She secured the gate again, and went back to the cottage. The servant met her at the door, and proposed calling up Hester Dethridge.
“We don’t know what the master may do while his brother’s away,” said the girl. “And one more of us isn’t one too many, when we are only women in the house.”
“You are quite right,” said Anne. “Wake your mistress.”
After ascending the stairs, they looked out into the garden, through the window at the end of the passage on the upper floor. He was still going round and round, but very slowly: his pace was fast slackening to a walk.
Anne went back to her room, and waited near the open door—ready to close and fasten it instantly if any thing occurred to alarm her. “How changed I am!” she thought to herself. “Every thing frightens me, now.”
The inference was the natural one—but not the true one. The change was not in herself, but in the situation in which she was placed. Her position during the investigation at Lady Lundie’s house had tried her moral courage only. It had exacted from her one of those noble efforts of self-sacrifice which the hidden forces in a woman’s nature are essentially capable of making. Her position at the cottage tried her physical courage: it called on her to rise superior to the sense of actual bodily danger—while that danger was lurking in the dark. There, the woman’s nature sank under the stress laid on it—there, her courage could strike no root in the strength of her love—there, the animal instincts were the instincts appealed to; and the firmness wanted was the firmness of a man.
Hester Dethridge’s door opened. She walked straight into Anne’s room.
The yellow clay-cold color of her face showed a faint flush of warmth; its deathlike stillness was stirred by a touch of life. The stony eyes, fixed as ever in their gaze, shone strangely with a dim inner lustre. Her gray hair, so neatly arranged at other times, was in disorder under her cap. All her movements were quicker than usual. Something had roused the stagnant vitality in the woman—it was working in her mind; it was forcing itself outward into her face. The servants at Windygates, in past times, had seen these signs, and had known them for a warning to leave Hester Dethridge to herself.
Anne asked her if she had heard what had happened.
She bowed her head.
“I hope you don’t mind being disturbed?”
She wrote on her slate: “I’m glad to be disturbed. I have been dreaming bad dreams. It’s good for me to be wakened, when sleep takes me backward in my life. What’s wrong with you? Frightened?”
“Yes.”
She wrote again, and pointed toward the garden with one hand, while she held the slate up with the other: “Frightened ofhim?”
“Terribly frightened.”
She wrote for the third time, and offered the slate to Anne with a ghastly smile: “I have been through it all. I know. You’re only at the beginning now. He’ll put the wrinkles in your face, and the gray in your hair. There will come a time when you’ll wish yourself dead and buried. You will live through it, for all that. Look at Me.”
As she read the last three words, Anne heard the garden door below opened and banged to again. She caught Hester Dethridge by the arm, and listened. The tramp of Geoffrey’s feet, staggering heavily in the passage, gave token of his approach to the stairs. He was talking to himself, still possessed by the delusion that he was at the foot-race. “Five to four on Delamayn. Delamayn’s won. Three cheers for the South, and one cheer more. Devilish long race. Night already! Perry! where’s Perry?”
He advanced, staggering from side to side of the passage. The stairs below creaked as he set his foot on them. Hester Dethridge dragged herself free from Anne, advanced, with her candle in her hand, and threw open Geoffrey’s bedroom door; returned to the head of the stairs; and stood there, firm as a rock, waiting for him. He looked up, as he set his foot on the next stair, and met the view of Hester’s face, brightly illuminated by the candle, looking down at him. On the instant he stopped, rooted to the place on which he stood. “Ghost! witch! devil!” he cried out, “take your eyes off me!” He shook his fist at her furiously, with an oath—sprang back into the hall—and shut himself into the dining-room from the sight of her. The panic which had seized him once already in the kitchen-garden at Windygates, under the eyes of the dumb cook, had fastened its hold on him once more. Frightened—absolutely frightened—of Hester Dethridge!
The gate bell rang. Julius had returned with the doctor.
Anne gave the key to the girl to let them in. Hester wrote on her slate, as composedly as if nothing had happened: “They’ll find me in the kitchen, if they want me. I sha’n’t go back to my bedroom. My bedroom’s full of bad dreams.” She descended the stairs. Anne waited in the upper passage, looking over into the hall below. “Your brother is in the drawing-room,” she called down to Julius. “The landlady is in the kitchen, if you want her.” She returned to her room, and waited for what might happen next.
After a brief interval she heard the drawing-room door open, and the voices of the men out side. There seemed to be some difficulty in persuading Geoffrey to ascend the stairs; he persisted in declaring that Hester Dethridge was waiting for him at the top of them. After a little they persuaded him that the way was free. Anne heard them ascend the stairs and close his bedroom door.
Another and a longer interval passed before the door opened again. The doctor was going away. He said his parting words to Julius in the passage. “Look in at him from time to time through the night, and give him another dose of the sedative mixture if he wakes. There is nothing to b e alarmed about in the restlessness and the fever. They are only the outward manifestations of some serious mischief hidden under them. Send for the medical man who has last attended him. Knowledge of the patient’s constitution is very important knowledge in this case.”
As Julius returned from letting the doctor out, Anne met him in the hall. She was at once struck by the worn look in his face, and by the fatigue which expressed itself in all his movements.
“You want rest,” she said. “Pray go to your room. I have heard what the doctor said to you. Leave it to the landlady and to me to sit up.”
Julius owned that he had been traveling from Scotland during the previous night. But he was unwilling to abandon the responsibility of watching his brother. “You are not strong enough, I am sure, to take my place,” he said, kindly. “And Geoffrey has some unreasoning horror of the landlady which makes it very undesirable that he should see her again, in his present state. I will go up to my room, and rest on the bed. If you hear any thing you have only to come and call me.”
An hour more passed.
Anne went to Geoffrey’s door and listened. He was stirring in his bed, and muttering to himself. She went on to the door of the next room, which Julius had left partly open. Fatigue had overpowered him; she heard, within, the quiet breathing of a man in a sound sleep. Anne turned back again resolved not to disturb him.
At the head of the stairs she hesitated—not knowing what to do. Her horror of entering Geoffrey’s room, by herself, was insurmountable. But who else was to do it? The girl had gone to bed. The reason which Julius had given for not employing the assistance of Hester Dethridge was unanswerable. She listened again at Geoffrey’s door. No sound was now audible in the room to a person in the passage outside. Would it be well to look in, and make sure that he had only fallen asleep again? She hesitated once more—she was still hesitating, when Hester Dethridge appeared from the kitchen.
She joined Anne at the top of the stairs—looked at her—and wrote a line on her slate: “Frightened to go in? Leave it to Me.”
The silence in the room justified the inference that he was asleep. If Hester looked in, Hester could do no harm now. Anne accepted the proposal.
“If you find any thing wrong,” she said, “don’t disturb his brother. Come to me first.”
With that caution she withdrew. It was then nearly two in the morning. She, like Julius, was sinking from fatigue. After waiting a little, and hearing nothing, she threw herself on the sofa in her room. If any thing happened, a knock at the door would rouse her instantly.
In the mean while Hester Dethridge opened Geoffrey’s bedroom door and went in.
The movements and the mutterings which Anne had heard, had been movements and mutterings in his sleep. The doctor’s composing draught, partially disturbed in its operation for the moment only, had recovered its sedative influence on his brain. Geoffrey was in a deep and quiet sleep.
Hester stood near the door, looking at him. She moved to go out again—stopped—and fixed her eyes suddenly on one of the inner corners of the room.
The same sinister change which had passed over her once already in Geoffrey’s presence, when they met in the kitchen-garden at Windygates, now passed over her again. Her closed lips dropped apart. Her eyes slowly dilated—moved, inch by inch from the corner, following something along the empty wall, in the direction of the bed—stopped at the head of the bed, exactly above Geoffrey’s sleeping face—stared, rigid and glittering, as if they saw a sight of horror close over it. He sighed faintly in his sleep. The sound, slight as it was, broke the spell that held her. She slowly lifted her withered hands, and wrung them above her head; fled back across the passage; and, rushing into her room, sank on her knees at the bedside.
Now, in the dead of night, a strange thing happened. Now, in the silence and the darkness, a hideous secret was revealed.
In the sanctuary of her own room—with all the other inmates of the house sleeping round her—the dumb woman threw off the mysterious and terrible disguise under which she deliberately isolated herself among her fellow-creatures in the hours of the day. Hester Dethridge spoke. In low, thick, smothered accents—in a wild litany of her own—she prayed. She called upon the mercy of God for deliverance from herself; for deliverance from the possession of the Devil; for blindness to fall on her, for death to strike her, so that she might never see that unnamed Horror more! Sobs shook the whole frame of the stony woman whom nothing human moved at other times. Tears poured over those clay-cold cheeks. One by one, the frantic words of her prayer died away on her lips. Fierce shuddering fits shook her from head to foot. She started up from her knees in the darkness. Light! light! light! The unnamed Horror was behind her in his room. The unnamed Horror was looking at her through his open door. She found the match-box, and lit the candle on her table—lit the two other candles set for ornament only on the mantle piece—and looked all round the brightly lighted little room. “Aha!” she said to herself, wiping the cold sweat of her agony from her face. “Candles to other people. God’s light tome.Nothing to be seen! nothing to be seen!” Taking one of the candles in her hand, she crossed the passage, with her head down, turned her back on Geoffrey’s open door, closed it quickly and softly, stretching out her hand behind her, and retreated again to her own room. She fastened the door, and took an ink-bottle and a pen from the mantle-piece. After considering for a moment, she hung a handkerchief over the keyhole, and laid an old shawl longwise at the bottom of the door, so as to hide the light in her room from the observation of any one in the house who might wake and come that way. This done, she opened the upper part of her dress, and, slipping her fingers into a secret pocket hidden in the inner side of her stays, produced from it some neatly folded leaves of thin paper. Spread out on the table, the leaves revealed themselves—all but the last—as closely covered with writing, in her own hand.
The first leaf was headed by this inscription: “My Confession. To be put into my coffin, and to be buried with me when I die.”
She turned the manuscript over, so as to get at the last page. The greater part of it was left blank. A few lines of writing, at the top, bore the date of the day of the week and month on which Lady Lundie had dismissed her from her situation at Windygates. The entry was expressed in these terms:
“I have seen IT again to-day. The first time for two months past. In the kitchen-garden. Standing behind the young gentleman whose name is Delamayn. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. I have resisted. By prayer. By meditation in solitude. By reading good books. I have left my place. I have lost sight of the young gentleman for good. Who will IT stand behind? and point to next? Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have mercy upon me!”
Under this she now added the following lines, first carefully prefixing the date:
“I have seen IT again to-night. I notice one awful change. IT has appeared twice behind the same person. This has never happened before. This makes the temptation more terrible than ever. To-night, in his bedroom, between the bed-head and the wall, I have seen IT behind young Mr. Delamayn again. The head just above his face, and the finger pointing downward at his throat. Twice behind this one man. And never twice behind any other living creature till now. If I see IT a third time behind him—Lord deliver me! Christ deliver me! I daren’t think of it. He shall leave my cottage to-morrow. I would fain have drawn back from the bargain, when the stranger took the lodgings for his friend, and the friend proved to be Mr. Delamayn. I didn’t like it, even then. After the warning to-night, my mind is made up. He shall go. He may have his money back, if he likes. He shall go. (Memorandum: Felt the temptation whispering this time, and the terror tearing at me all the while, as I have never felt them yet. Resisted, as before, by prayer. Am now going down stairs to meditate against it in solitude—to fortify myself against it by good books. Lord be merciful to me a sinner!)”
In those words she closed the entry, and put the manuscript back in the secret pocket in her stays.
She went down to the little room looking on the garden, which had once been her brother’s study. There she lit a lamp, and took some books from a shelf that hung against the wall. The books were the Bible, a volume of Methodist sermons, and a set of collected Memoirs of Methodist saints. Ranging these last carefully round her, in an order of her own, Hester Dethridge sat down with the Bible on her lap to watch out the night.
This was Anne’s first thought, when the sunlight poured in at her window, and woke her the next morning.
She made immediate inquiry of the servant. The girl could only speak for herself. Nothing had occurred to disturb her after she had gone to bed. Her master was still, she believed, in his room. Mrs. Dethridge was at her work in the kitchen.
Anne went to the kitchen. Hester Dethridge was at her usual occupation at that time—preparing the breakfast. The slight signs of animation which Anne had noticed in her when they last met appeared no more. The dull look was back again in her stony eyes; the lifeless torpor possessed all her movements. Asked if any thing had happened in the night, she slowly shook her stolid head, slowly made the sign with her hand which signified, “Nothing.”
Leaving the kitchen, Anne saw Julius in the front garden. She went out and joined him.
“I believe I have to thank your consideration for me for some hours of rest,” he said. “It was five in the morning when I woke. I hope you had no reason to regret having left me to sleep? I went into Geoffrey’s room, and found him stirring. A second dose of the mixture composed him again. The fever has gone. He looks weaker and paler, but in other respects like himself. We will return directly to the question of his health. I have something to say to you, first, about a change which may be coming in your life here.”
“Has he consented to the separation?”
“No. He is as obstinate about it as ever. I have placed the matter before him in every possible light. He still refuses, positively refuses, a provision which would make him an independent man for life.”
“Is it the provision he might have had, Lord Holchester, if—?”
“If he had married Mrs. Glenarm? No. It is impossible, consistently with my duty to my mother, and with what I owe to the position in which my father’s death has placed me, that I can offer him such a fortune as Mrs. Glenarm’s. Still, it is a handsome income which he is mad enough to refuse. I shall persist in pressing it on him. He must and shall take it.”
Anne felt no reviving hope roused in her by his last words. She turned to another subject.
“You had something to tell me,” she said. “You spoke of a change.”
“True. The landlady here is a very strange person; and she has done a very strange thing. She has given Geoffrey notice to quit these lodgings.”
“Notice to quit?” Anne repeated, in amazement.
“Yes. In a formal letter. She handed it to me open, as soon as I was up this morning. It was impossible to get any explanation from her. The poor dumb creature simply wrote on her slate: ‘He may have his money back, if he likes: he shall go!’ Greatly to my surprise (for the woman inspires him with the strongest aversion) Geoffrey refuses to go until his term is up. I have made the peace between them for to-day. Mrs. Dethridge very reluctantly, consents to give him four-and-twenty hours. And there the matter rests at present.”
“What can her motive be?” said Anne.
“It’s useless to inquire. Her mind is evidently off its balance. One thing is clear, Geoffrey shall not keep you here much longer. The coming change will remove you from this dismal place—which is one thing gained. And it is quite possible that new scenes and new surroundings may have their influence on Geoffrey for good. His conduct—otherwise quite incomprehensible—may be the result of some latent nervous irritation which medical help might reach. I don’t attempt to disguise from myself or from you, that your position here is a most deplorable one. But before we despair of the future, let us at least inquire whether there is any explanation of my brother’s present behavior to be found in the present state of my brother’s health. I have been considering what the doctor said to me last night. The first thing to do is to get the best medical advice on Geoffrey’s case which is to be had. What do you think?”
“I daren’t tell you what I think, Lord Holchester. I will try—it is a very small return to make for your kindness—I will try to see my position with your eyes, not with mine. The best medical advice that you can obtain is the advice of Mr. Speedwell. It was he who first made the discovery that your brother was in broken health.”
“The very man for our purpose! I will send him here to-day or to-morrow. Is there any thing else I can do for you? I shall see Sir Patrick as soon as I get to town. Have you any message for him?”
Anne hesitated. Looking attentively at her, Julius noticed that she changed color when he mentioned Sir Patrick’s name.
“Will you say that I gratefully thank him for the letter which Lady Holchester was so good us to give me last night,” she replied. “And will you entreat him, from me, not to expose himself, on my account, to—” she hesitated, and finished the sentence with her eyes on the ground—“to what might happen, if he came here and insisted on seeing me.”
“Does he propose to do that?”
She hesitated again. The little nervous contraction of her lips at one side of the mouth became more marked than usual. “He writes that his anxiety is unendurable, and that he is resolved to see me,” she answered softly.
“He is likely to hold to his resolution, I think,” said Julius. “When I saw him yesterday, Sir Patrick spoke of you in terms of admiration—”
He stopped. The bright tears were glittering on Anne’s eyelashes; one of her hands was toying nervously with something hidden (possibly Sir Patrick’s letter) in the bosom of her dress. “I thank him with my whole heart,” she said, in low, faltering tones. “But it is best that he should not come here.”
“Would you like to write to him?”
“I think I should prefer your giving him my message.”
Julius understood that the subject was to proceed no further. Sir Patrick’s letter had produced some impression on her, which the sensitive nature of the woman seemed to shrink from acknowledging, even to herself. They turned back to enter the cottage. At the door they were met by a surprise. Hester Dethridge, with her bonnet on—dressed, at that hour of the morning, to go out!
“Are you going to market already?” Anne asked.
Hester shook her head.
“When are you coming back?”
Hester wrote on her slate: “Not till the night-time.”
Without another word of explanation she pulled her veil down over her face, and made for the gate. The key had been left in the dining-room by Julius, after he had let the doctor out. Hester had it in her hand. She opened he gate and closed the door after her, leaving the key in the lock. At the moment when the door banged to Geoffrey appeared in the passage.
“Where’s the key?” he asked. “Who’s gone out?”
His brother answered the question. He looked backward and forward suspiciously between Julius and Anne. “What does she go out for at his time?” he said. “Has she left the house to avoid Me?”
Julius thought this the likely explanation. Geoffrey went down sulkily to the gate to lock it, and returned to them, with the key in his pocket.
“I’m obliged to be careful of the gate,” he said. “The neighborhood swarms with beggars and tramps. If you want to go out,” he added, turning pointedly to Anne, “I’m at your service, as a good husband ought to be.”
After a hurried breakfast Julius took his departure. “I don’t accept your refusal,” he said to his brother, before Anne. “You will see me here again.” Geoffrey obstinately repeated the refusal. “If you come here every day of your life,” he said, “it will be just the same.”
The gate closed on Julius. Anne returned again to the solitude of her own chamber. Geoffrey entered the drawing-room, placed the volumes of the Newgate Calendar on the table before him, and resumed the reading which he had been unable to continue on the evening before.
Hour after hour he doggedly plodded through one case of murder after another. He had read one good half of the horrid chronicle of crime before his power of fixing his attention began to fail him. Then he lit his pipe, and went out to think over it in the garden. However the atrocities of which he had been reading might differ in other respects, there was one terrible point of resemblance, which he had not anticipated, and in which every one of the cases agreed. Sooner or later, there was the dead body always certain to be found; always bearing its dumb witness, in the traces of poison or in the marks of violence, to the crime committed on it.
He walked to and fro slowly, still pondering over the problem which had first found its way into his mind when he had stopped in the front garden and had looked up at Anne’s window in the dark. “How?” That had been the one question before him, from the time when the lawyer had annihilated his hopes of a divorce. It remained the one question still. There was no answer to it in his own brain; there was no answer to it in the book which he had been consulting. Every thing was in his favor if he could only find out “how.” He had got his hated wife up stairs at his mercy—thanks to his refusal of the money which Julius had offered to him. He was living in a place absolutely secluded from public observation on all sides of it—thanks to his resolution to remain at the cottage, even after his landlady had insulted him by sending him a notice to quit. Every thing had been prepared, every thing had been sacrificed, to the fulfillment of one purpose—and how to attain that purpose was still the same impenetrable mystery to him which it had been from the first!
What was the other alternative? To accept the proposal which Julius had made. In other words, to give up his vengeance on Anne, and to turn his back on the splendid future which Mrs. Glenarm’s devotion still offered to him.
Never! He would go back to the books. He was not at the end of them. The slightest hint in the pages which were still to be read might set his sluggish brain working in the right direction. The way to be rid of her, without exciting the suspicion of any living creature, in the house or out of it, was a way that might be found yet.
Could a man, in his position of life, reason in this brutal manner? could he act in this merciless way? Surely the thought of what he was about to do must have troubled him this time!
Pause for a moment—and look back at him in the past.
Did he feel any remorse when he was plotting the betrayal of Arnold in the garden at Windygates? The sense which feels remorse had not been put into him. What he is now is the legitimate consequence of what he was then. A far more serious temptation is now urging him to commit a far more serious crime. How is he to resist? Will his skill in rowing (as Sir Patrick once put it), his swiftness in running, his admirable capacity and endurance in other physical exercises, help him to win a purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his own cruelty? No! The moral and mental neglect of himself, which the material tone of public feeling about him has tacitly encouraged, has left him at the mercy of the worst instincts in his nature—of all that is most vile and of all that is most dangerous in the composition of the natural man. With the mass of his fellows, no harm out of the common has come of this, because no temptation out of the common has passed their way. But withhim,the case is reversed. A temptation out of the common has passedhisway. How does it find him prepared to meet it? It finds him, literally and exactly, what his training has left him, in the presence of any temptation small or great—a defenseless man.
Geoffrey returned to the cottage. The servant stopped him in the passage, to ask at what time he wished to dine. Instead of answering, he inquired angrily for Mrs. Dethridge. Mrs. Dethridge not come back.
It was now late in the afternoon, and she had been out since the early morning. This had never happened before. Vague suspicions of her, one more monstrous than another, began to rise in Geoffrey’s mind. Between the drink and the fever, he had been (as Julius had told him) wandering in his mind during a part of the night. Had he let any thing out in that condition? Had Hester heard it? And was it, by any chance, at the bottom of her long absence and her notice to quit? He determined—without letting her see that he suspected her—to clear up that doubt as soon as his landlady returned to the house.
The evening came. It was past nine o’clock before there was a ring at the bell. The servant came to ask for the key. Geoffrey rose to go to the gate himself—and changed his mind before he left the room.Hersuspicions might be roused (supposing it to be Hester who was waiting for admission) if he opened the gate to her when the servant was there to do it. He gave the girl the key, and kept out of sight.
“Dead tired!”—the servant said to herself, seeing her mistress by the light of the lamp over the gate.
“Dead tired!”—Geoffrey said to himself, observing Hester suspiciously as she passed him in the passage on her way up stairs to take off her bonnet in her own room.
“Dead tired!”—Anne said to herself, meeting Hester on the upper floor, and receiving from her a letter in Blanche’s handwriting, delivered to the mistress of the cottage by the postman, who had met her at her own gate.
Having given the letter to Anne, Hester Dethridge withdrew to her bedroom.
Geoffrey closed the door of the drawing-room, in which the candles were burning, and went into the dining-room, in which there was no light. Leaving the door ajar, he waited to intercept his landlady on her way back to her supper in the kitchen.
Hester wearily secured her door, wearily lit the candles, wearily put the pen and ink on the table. For some minutes after this she was compelled to sit down, and rally her strength and fetch her breath. After a little she was able to remove her upper clothing. This done she took the manuscript inscribed, “My Confession,” out of the secret pocket of her stays—turned to the last leaf as before—and wrote another entry, under the entry made on the previous night.
“This morning I gave him notice to quit, and offered him his money back if he wanted it. He refuses to go. He shall go to-morrow, or I will burn the place over his head. All through to-day I have avoided him by keeping out of the house. No rest to ease my mind, and no sleep to close my eyes. I humbly bear my cross as long as my strength will let me.”
At those words the pen dropped from her fingers. Her head nodded on her breast. She roused herself with a start. Sleep was the enemy she dreaded: sleep brought dreams.
She unfastened the window-shutters and looked out at the night. The peaceful moonlight was shining over the garden. The clear depths of the night sky were soothing and beautiful to look at. What! Fading already? clouds? darkness? No! Nearly asleep once more. She roused herself again, with a start. There was the moonlight, and there was the garden as bright under it as ever.
Dreams or no dreams, it was useless to fight longer against the weariness that overpowered her. She closed the shutters, and went back to the bed; and put her Confession in its customary place at night, under her pillow.
She looked round the room—and shuddered. Every corner of it was filled with the terrible memories of the past night. She might wake from the torture of the dreams to find the terror of the Apparition watching at her bedside. Was there no remedy? no blessed safeguard under which she might tranquilly resign herself to sleep? A thought crossed her mind. The good book—the Bible. If she slept with the Bible under her pillow, there was hope in the good book—the hope of sleeping in peace.
It was not worth while to put on the gown and the stays which she had taken off. Her shawl would cover her. It was equally needless to take the candle. The lower shutters would not be closed at that hour; and if they were, she could lay her hand on the Bible, in its place on the parlor book-shelf, in the dark.
She removed the Confession from under the pillow. Not even for a minute could she prevail on herself to leave it in one room while she was away from it in another. With the manuscript folded up, and hidden in her hand, she slowly descended the stairs again. Her knees trembled under her. She was obliged to hold by the banister, with the hand that was free.
Geoffrey observed her from the dining-room, on her way down the stairs. He waited to see what she did, before he showed himself, and spoke to her. Instead of going on into the kitchen, she stopped short, and entered the parlor. Another suspicious circumstance! What did she want in the parlor, without a candle, at that time of night?
She went to the book-case—her dark figure plainly visible in the moonlight that flooded the little room. She staggered and put her hand to her head; giddy, to all appearance, from extreme fatigue. She recovered herself, and took a book from the shelf. She leaned against the wall after she had possessed herself of the book. Too weary, as it seemed, to get up stairs again without a little rest. Her arm-chair was near her. Better rest, for a moment or two, to be had in that than could be got by leaning against the wall. She sat down heavily in the chair, with the book on her lap. One of her arms hung over the arm of the chair, with the hand closed, apparently holding something.
Her head nodded on her breast—recovered itself—and sank gently on the cushion at the back of the chair. Asleep? Fast asleep.
In less than a minute the muscles of the closed hand that hung over the arm of the chair slowly relaxed. Something white slipped out of her hand, and lay in the moonlight on the floor.
Geoffrey took off his heavy shoes, and entered the room noiselessly in his stockings. He picked up the white thing on the floor. It proved to be a collection of several sheets of thin paper, neatly folded together, and closely covered with writing.
Writing? As long as she was awake she had kept it hidden in her hand. Why hide it?
Had he let out any thing to compromise himself when he was light-headed with the fever the night before? and had she taken it down in writing to produce against him? Possessed by guilty distrust, even that monstrous doubt assumed a look of probability to Geoffrey’s mind. He left the parlor as noiselessly as he had entered it, and made for the candle-light in the drawing-room, determined to examine the manuscript in his hand.
After carefully smoothing out the folded leaves on the table, he turned to the first page, and read these lines.