Herhusband was at hand—that is to say, under the same roof, and at that moment in the room in which the blind woman was now sitting, bleeding from head and hand, and smiling as she talked, with the false light of a malignant irony.
“So, husband and wife are met again! And what have you to say after so long a time?”
“I’ve nothing to say. Let my deeds speak. I’ve given you year by year fully half my income.”
She laughed scornfully, and exclaimed merely—
“Magnificent man!”
“Miserable pittance it is, but the more miserable, the harder the sacrifice for me. I don’t say I have been able to do much; but I have done more than my means warrant, and I don’t understand what you propose to yourself by laying yourself out to torment and embarrass me. What the devil do you follow me about for? Do you think I’m fool enough to be bullied?”
“A fine question from Charles Vairfield of Wyvern to his wife!” she observed with a pallid simper.
“Wife and husband are terms very easily pronounced,” said he.
“And relations very easily made,” she rejoined.
He was leaning with his shoulder against the high mantelpiece, and looking upon her with a countenance in which you might have seen disdain and fear mingling with something of compunction.
“Relations very easily made, and still more easily affected,” he replied. “Come, Bertha, there is no use in quarrelling over points of law. Past is past, as Leonora says. If I have wronged you anything I am sorry. I’ve tried to make amends; and though many a fellow would have been tired out long ago, I continue to give you proofs that I am not.”
“That is a sort of benevolence,” she said, in her own language, “which may as well be voluntary, for if it be not, the magistrates will compel it.”
“The magistrates are neither fools nor tyrants. You’ll make nothing of the magistrates. You have no rights, and you know it.”
“An odd country where a wife has no rights.”
“Come, Bertha, there is no use in picking a quarrel. While you take me quietly you have your share, and a good deal more. You used to be reasonable.”
“A reasonable wife, I suppose, gives up her position, her character, her prospects, whenever it answers her husband to sacrifice these trifles for his villainous pleasures. Your English wives must be meek souls indeed if they like it. I don’t hear they are such lambs though.”
“I’m not going to argue law points, as I said before. Lawyers are the proper persons to do that. You used to be reasonable, Bertha—where’s the good in pushing things to extremes?”
“What a gentle creature you are,” she laughed, “and how persuasive!”
“I’m a quiet fellow enough, I believe, as men go, but I’m not persuasive, and I know it. I wish I were.”
“Those whom you have persuaded once are not likely to be persuaded again. Your persuasions are not always lucky. Are they?”
“You want to quarrel about everything. You want to leave no possible point of agreement.”
“Things are at a bad pass when husband and wife are so.”
Charles looked at her angrily for a moment, and then down to the floor, and he whistled a few bars of a tune.
“What do you whistle for?” she demanded.
“Come, Bertha, don’t be foolish.”
“You were once a gentleman. It is a blackguard who whistles in reply to a lady’s words,” she said, on a sudden stretching out her hand tremulously, as if in search of some one to grasp.
“Well, don’t mind. Stick to one thing at a time. For God’s sake say what you want, and have done with it.”
“You must acknowledge me before the world for your wife,” she answered with resolute serenity, and raising her face, and shutting her mouth she sniffed defiantly through her distended nostrils.
“Come, come, Bertha, what good on earth could come of that?”
“Little to you, perhaps.”
“And none to you.”
She laughed savagely. “That lie won’t do.”
“Bertha, Bertha, we may hate one another if you will. But is it not as well to try whether we can agree upon anything. Let us just for the present talk intelligibly.”
“You tried to murder me, you arch-villain.”
“Nonsense,” said he, turning pale, “how can you talk so—how can you? Could I help interposing? You may well be thankful that I did.”
“You tried to murder me,” she screamed.
“You know that’s false. I took the knife from your hand, and by doing so I saved two lives. It was you—not I—who hurt your hand.”
“You villain, you damned villain, I wish I could kill you dead.”
“All the worse for you, Bertha.”
“I wish you were dead and cold in your bed, and my hand on your face to be sure of it.”
“Now you’re growing angry again. I thought we had done with storm and hysterics for a little, and could talk, and perhaps agree upon something, or at all events not waste our few minutes in violence.”
“Violence!—you wretch, who began it?”
“What can you mean, Bertha?”
“You’ve married that woman. O I know it all—I your lawful wife living. I’ll have you transported, double-dyed villain.”
“Where’s the good of screaming all this at the top of your voice?” he said, at last growing angry. “You wish you could kill me? I almost wish you could. I’ve been only too good to you, and allowed you to trouble me too long.”
“Ha, ha!—you’d like to put me out of the way?”
“You’ll do that for yourself. Can’t you wait, can’t you listen, can’t you have common reason, just for one moment? What do you want, what do you wish? Do you want every farthing I possess on earth, and to leave me nothing?”
“I’m your wife, and I’ll have my rights.”
“Now listen to me, that’s a question I need not discuss, because you already know what I believe on the subject.”
“You know what your brother Harry thinks.”
“I know what it is his interest to think.”
“You daren’t say that if he were here, you coward.”
“And I don’t care a farthing what he thinks.”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“But if it had been fifty times over, what it never was, a marriage, your own conduct, long ago, would have dissolved it.”
“And you allow you have married that woman?”
“I shan’t talk to you about it; how I shall act, or may act, orhaveacted is my own affair, and rely upon it I’ll do nothing on the assumption that I ever was married to you.”
Up stood the tall woman, with hands extended toward him, wide open, with a slightly groping motion as if opening a curtain; not a word did she say, but her sightless eyes, which stared full at him, were quivering with that nervous tremor which is so unpleasant to see.
She drew breath two or three times at intervals, long and deep, almost a sob, and then without speaking or moving more she sat down, looking awfully white and wicked.
For a time the old soldier had lost the thread of her discourse. Charles heard a step not very far off. He thought his unreasonable Bertha was about to have a fit, and opening the door he called lustily to Mildred.
ItwasMrs. Tarnley.
“Will you get her some water, or whatever she ought to have, I think she is ill, and pray be quick.”
With a dark prying look Mildred glanced from one to the other.
“It’s in a mad-house and not here the like of her should be, wi’ them fits and frenzies,” she muttered as she applied herself to the resuscitation of the Dutchwoman.
On her toilet was a little group of bottles labelled “Sal-volatile,” “Asafœtida,” “Valerian.”
“I don’t know which is the right one, but this can’t be far wrong,” she remarked, selecting the sal-volatile, and dropping some into the water.
“La! so it was a sort o’ fit. See how stiff she was. Lor’ bless us, I do wish she was under a mad doctor. See how her feet’s stuck out, and her thumbs tight shut in her fists, and her teeth set,” and old Mildred applied the sal-volatile phial to the patient’s nostrils, and gradually got her into a drowsy, yawning state, in which she seemed to care and comprehend little or nothing of where she was or what had befallen her.
“Tell her I stayed till I saw her better, if she asks, and that I’m coming back again. She says she is hurt.”
“So much the better,” said Mildred; “that will keep her from prowling about the house like a cat or a ghost, as she did, all night, and no good came of it.”
“And will you look to her wrist: she cut it last night, and it is very clumsily tied up, and I’ll come again, tell her.”
So, with a bewildered brain and a direful load at his heart, he left the room.
Where was Alice, he thought. He went downstairs and up again by the back staircase to their room, and there found the wreck and disorder of the odious scene he had witnessed, still undisturbed, and looking somehow more shocking in the sober light of morning.
From this sickening record of the occurrences of last night he turned for a moment to the window, and looked out on the tranquil and sylvan solitudes, and then back again upon the disorder which had so nearly marked a scene of murder.
“How do I keep my reason?” thought he; “is there in England so miserable a man? Why should not I end it?”
Between the room where he stood and the angle of that bedroom in which at that moment was the wretch who agitated every hour of his existence with dismay, there intervened but eight-and-twenty feet, in that polyhedric and irregular old house. If he had but one tithe of her wickedness he had but to take up that poker, strike through, and brain her as she sat there.
Why was he not a little more or a little less wicked? If the latter, he might never have been in his present fix. If the other, he might find a short way out of the thicket—“hew his way out with a bloody axe”—and none but those whose secrecy he might rely on be the wiser!
Avaunt, horrible shadows! Such beckoning phantoms from the abyss were not tempters, but simply terrors. No, he was far more likely to load a pistol, put the muzzle in his mouth, and blow his harassed brains out.
Sofar as a man not very resolute can be said to have made up his mind to anything, Charles Fairfield had quite made up his, driven thus fairly into a corner, to fight his battle now, and decisively. He would hold no terms and offer no compromise. Let her do her worst. She had found out his secret. Oh! brother Harry, hadyouplayed him false? And she had quotedyouropinion against him. Had you been inflaming this insane enemy with an impracticable confidence?
Well, no matter, now; all the better, perhaps. There was already an end of concealment between that enemy and himself, and soon would be of suspense.
“God help me! at the eve of what an abyss I stand. That wretched woman, poor as she is, and nearly mad, in a place like London she’ll be certain to find lawyers only too glad to take up her case, and force me to a trial—first, a trial to prove a marriage and make costs of me, and then, Heaven knows what more; and the publicity, and the miserable uncertainty; and Alice, poor little Alice. Merciful Heaven! what had she done to merit this long agony and possible ruin?”
He peeped into the dining-room as he passed, but all was there as he had left it. Alice had not been in it. So at the kitchen door he knocked.
“Who’s there? Is anyone there?”
Encouraged by his voice old Dulcibella answered from within. The door was opened, and he entered.
A few moments’ silence, except for Alice’s murmured and sobbing welcome, a trembling, close embrace, and he said, with a gentle look, in a faint tone—
“Alice, darling, I have no good news to tell. Everything has gone wrong with me, and we must leave this. Let Dulcibella go up and get such things as are necessary to take with you; but, Dulcibella, mind you tell nobody your mistress is leaving this. And, Alice, you’ll come with me. We’ll go where they can neither follow nor trace us; and let fate do its worst. We may be happier yet in our exile than ever we were at home. And when they have banished me they have done their worst.”
His tenderness for Alice, frozen for a time, had returned. As she clung to him, her large, soft gray eyes looking up in his face so piteously moved him. He had intended a different sort of speech—colder, dryer—and under the spell of that look had come this sudden gush of a better feeling—the fond clasp of his arm, and the hurried kiss he pressed upon her cheek.
“I said, Alice, happier,happier, darling, a thousandfold. For the present I speak in riddles. You have seen how miserable I am. I’ll tell you everything by-and-by. A conspiracy, I do believe, an unnatural conspiracy, that has worn out my miserable brain and spirits, and harassed me to death. I’ll tell you all time enough, and you’ll say it is a miracle I have borne it as I do. Don’t look so frightened, you poor little thing. We are perfectly safe; I’m in no real danger, but harassed incessantly—only harassed, and that, thank God, shall end.”
He kissed her again very tenderly, and again; and he said—
“You and Dulcibella shall go on. Clinton will drive you to Hatherton, and there you’ll get horses and post on to Cranswell, and I will overtake you there. I must go now and give him his directions, and I may as well leave you this note. I wrote it yesterday. You must have some money—there is some in it, and the names of the places, and we’ll be there to-night. And what is it, darling? You look as if you wished to ask me something.”
“I—I was going to ask—but I thought perhaps I ought not until you can tell me everything—but you spoke of a conspiracy, and I was going to ask whether that dreadful woman who got into my room has anything to do with it.”
“Nonsense, child, that is a miserable mad woman;” he laughed dismally. “Just wait a little, and you shall know all I know myself.”
“She’s not to stay here, I mean, of course, if anything should prevent our leaving this to-day.”
“Why should you fancy that?” he asked, a little enigmatically.
“Mrs. Tarnley said she was going to the madhouse.”
“We’ll see time enough, you shall see her no more,” he said, and away he went, and she saw him pass by the window and out of the yard. And now she had leisure to think how ill he was looking, or rather to remember how it had struck her when he had appeared at the door. Yes, indeed, worn out and harassed to death. Thank God, he was now to escape from that misery, and to secure the repose which it was only too obvious he needed.
Dulcibella returned with such things as she thought indispensable, and she and her mistress were soon in more animated discussion than they had engaged in since the scenes of the past night.
Charles Fairfield had to make a call at farmer Chubbs’ to persuade him to lend his horse, about which he made a difficulty. It was not far up the glen towards Church Carwell, but when he came back he found the Grange again in a new confusion.
When Charles Fairfield, ascending the steep and narrow road which under tall trees darkly mounts from the Glen of Carwell to the plateau under the grey walls of the Grange, had reached that sylvan platform, he saw there, looking in the direction of Cressley Common, in that dim, religious light, Tom Clinton, in his fustian jacket, scratching his head and looking, it seemed, with interest, after some receding object. A little behind him, similarly engrossed, stood old Mildred Tarnley, with her hand above her eyes, though there was little need of artificial shade in that solemn grove, and again, a little to her rear, peeped broad-shouldered Lilly Dogger, standing close to the threshold of the yard door.
Tom Clinton was first to turn about, and sauntering slowly toward the house, he spoke something to Mrs. Tarnley, who, waiting till he reached her, turned about in the same direction, and talking gravely, and looking over their shoulders, as people sometimes do in the direction in which a runaway horse has disappeared, they came to a standstill at the door, under the great ash-tree, whose columnar stem is mantled with thick ivy, and there again looking back, the little girl leaning and listening, unheeded, against the door-post, the group remained in conference.
Had Charles Fairfield been in his usual state of mind his curiosity would have been piqued by an appearance of activity so unusual in his drowsy household. As it was, he cared not, but approached, looking down upon the road with his hands in his pockets listlessly.
Mrs. Tarnley whispered something to Tom and jogged him in the ribs, looking all the time at the approaching figure of Charles Fairfield.
The master of the Grange approached, looked up, and saw Tom standing near, with the air of one who had something to say. Mrs. Tarnley had drawn back, a little doubtful possibly, of the effect on his nerves.
“Well, Tom, Chubbs will lend the horse,” said Charles. “We’ll go round to the stable, I’ve a word to say.”
Tom touched his hat, still looking in his face with an inquiring and ominous expression.
“Do you want to say anything particular, Tom?” asked his master, with a sudden foreboding of some new ill.
“Nothing, sir, but Squire Rodney of Wrydell, has come over from Wykeford.”
“He’s here—is he?” asked Charles, paler on a sudden.
“He’s gone, sir, please.”
“Gone, is he? Well, well, there’s not much in that.”
“’Twas only, sir, that he brought two men wi’ him.”
“Do you mean?—you don’t mean—what men did he bring?”
“Well, they was constable folk, I believe, they must a’ bin, for they made an arrest.”
“Awhat, do you mean?”
“He made out a writin’, and he ’ad me in, and questioned me, but I’d nout to tell, sir, and he asked where you was, and I told him, as you ordered I was to say, you was gone, and he took the mistress’s her story, and made her make oath on’t, and the same wi’ the others—Mrs. Tarnley, and the little girl, and the blind woman, she be took up for murder, or I don’t know for what, only he said he could not take no bail for her, so they made her sure, and has took her off, I do suppose, to Wykeford pris’n.”
“Of course, that’s right, I suppose, all right, eh?” Charles looked as if he was going to drop to the earth, so leaden was his hue, and so meaningless the stare with which he looked in Tom’s face.
“But—but—who sent for him? I didn’t. D—— you, who sent for him? ’Twasn’t I. And—and who’s master here? Who the devil sent for that meddling rascal from Wykeford?”
Charles’s voice had risen to a roar as he shook Tom furiously by the collar.
Springing back a bit, Tom answered, with his hand grasping his collar where the squire had just clutched him.
“I don’t know, I didn’t, and I don’t believe no one did. It’s a smart run from here across the common. I don’t believe no one sent from the Grange—I’m sure no one went from this—not a bit, not a toe, not a soul, I’m sure and certain.”
“What’s this, what’s this, what the devil’s all this, Tom?” said the squire, stamping, and shaking his fist in the air, like a man distracted.
“Why did you let her go—why did you let them take her—d—— you? I’ve a mind to pitch you over that cliff and smash you.”
“Well, sir,” said Tom, making another step or two back, and himself pale and stern now, with his open hand raised, partly in deprecation, “where’s the good o’ blamin’ me? what could I do wi’ the law again me, and how could I tell what you’d think, and’twarn’tno one from this sent for him, not one, but news travels apace, and who’s he can stop it?—not me, noryou,” said Tom, sturdily, “and he just come over of his own head, and nabbed her.”
“My God! It’s done. I thought you would not have allowed me to be trampled on, and the place insulted; I took ye for a man, Tom. Where’s my horse—by heaven, I’ll have him. I’ll make it a day’s work he’ll remember. That d—— Rodney, coming down to my house with his catchpoles, to pay off old scores, and insult me.”
With his fist clenched and raised, Charles Fairfield ran furiously round to the stable yard, followed cautiously by Tom Clinton.
Havingher own misgivings as to the temper in which her master would take thiscoupof the arrest, Mildred Tarnley prudently kept her own counsel, and retreated nearly to the kitchen door, while theéclaircissementtook place outside. Popping in and out to see what would come of it, old Mildred affected to be busy about her mops and tubs. After a time, in came Tom, looking sulky and hot.
“Is he comin’ this way?” asked Mildred.
“Not him,” answered Tom.
“Where is he?”
“’Twixt this and Wykeford,” he answered, “across the common he’s ridin’.”
“To Wykeford, hey?”
“To Wykeford, every foot, if he don’t run him down on the way; and when they meet—him and Squire Rodney—’twill be hot and shrewd work between them, I tell ye. I’d a rid wi’ him myself if there was a beast to carry me, for three agin one is too long odds.”
“Ye don’t mean to tellme!” exclaimed Mildred, planting her mop perpendicularly on the ground, and leaning immovably on this sceptre.
“Tell ye what?”
“There’s goin’ to be rough work like that on the head o’t?”
“Hot blood, ma’am. Ye know the Fairfields. They folk don’t stand long jawin’. It’s like when the blood’s up the hand’s up too.”
“And what’s he to fight for—not that blind beldame, sure?”
“I want my mug o’ beer,” said Tom, turning the conversation.
“Yes, sure,” she said, “yes, ye shall have it. But what for should Master Charles go to wry words wi’ Squire Rodney, and what for should there be blows and blood spillin’ between ’em? Nonsense!”
“I can’t help ’em. I’d lend master a hand if I could. Squire Rodney’s no fool neither—’twill e’en be fight dog, fight bear—and there’s two stout lads wi’ him will make short work o’t.”
“Ye don’t think he’s like to be hurt, do ye?”
“Well, ye know, they say fightin’ dogs comes haltin’ home. He’s as strong as two, that’s all, and has a good nag under him. Now gi’e me my beer.”
“’Twon’t be nothin’, Tom, don’t you think, Tom? It won’t come to nothin’?”
“If he comes up wi’ them ’twill be an up-and-down fight, I take it. ’Twas an unlucky maggot bit him.”
“Bit who?”
“What but the Divil brought Squire Rodney over here?”
“Who knows?” answered the dame, fumbling in her pocket for the key of the beer-cellar—“I’m goin’ to fetch your beer, Tom.”
And away she went, and in a minute returned with his draught of beer.
“And I think,” she said, setting it down before him, “’twas well done, taking that beast to her right place, do it who might. She’s just a bedlam Bess—clean out o’ her wits wi’ wickedness—mad wi’ drink and them fits she has. We knows here what she is, and bloody work she’d a made last night wi’ that poor young lady, that’ll never be the same again—the old limb—and master himself, though he’s angered a bit because Justice Rodney did not ask his leave to catch a murderer, if ye please, down here at the Grange.”
“There’s more in it, mayhap, than just that,” said Tom, blowing the froth off his beer.
“To come down here without with your leave or by your leave, to squat in the Grange here like gipsey would on Cressley Common, as tho’ she was lady of all—to hurt who she pleased, and live as she liked. More in’t than that, ye say, what more?”
“Hoot, how should I know? Mayhap she thinks she’s as good a right as another to a bit and a welcome down here.”
“She was here before—years enough gone now, and long enough she stayed, and cost a pretty penny, too, I warrant you. Them was more tired of her than me—guest ever, welcome never, they say. She was a play-actor, or something, long ago—a great idle huzzy, never would earn a honest penny, nor do nothing useful, all her days.”
“Aye, Joan reels ill and winds worse, and de’il a stomach she has to spin—that’ll be the way wi’ her, I swear—ha, ha, ha. She’ll not be growin’ richer, I warrant—left in the mud and found in the mire—they folk knows nout o’ thrift, and small luck and less good about ’em.”
“If ye heard her talk, Tom, ye’d soon know what sort she is, always cravin’—she would not leave a body a shillin’ if she could help it.”
“Ay, I warrant, women, priests, and poultry have never enough,” said Tom. “I know nout about her, nor who she’s a lookin’ after here, but she’s safe enough now I take it; and bloody folks, they say, digs their own graves. But as I said, I knows nout about her, and I say nout, and he that judges as he runs may owertake repentance.”
“’Tis easy judgin’ here, I’m thinkin’. Killin’ and murder’s near akin, and when Mr. Charles cools a bit, he’ll thank Squire Rodney for riddin’ his house of that blind serpent. ’Tis somethin’ to be so near losing his wife. So sure as your hand’s on that mug it would a’ bin done while the cat’s lickin’ her ear if he had not bounced in on the minute, and once dead, dead as Adam.”
“Who loseth his wife and sixpence hath lost a tester, they do say,” answered Tom, with a laugh.
“None but a born beast would say so!” said Mildred Tarnley, with a swarthy flush, and striking her hand sternly on the table.
“Well, ’tis only a sayin’, ye know, and no new one neither,” said Tom, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, and standing up. “But the mistress is a pretty lady, and a kind—and a gentle-born as all may see, and I’d give or take a shrewd blow or two, or harm should happen her.”
“Ye’d be no man else, Tom, and I don’t doubt ye. Little thought I last night what was in her head, the sly villain, when I left her back again in her bed, and the cross door shut and locked. Lord a’ mercy on us! To think how the fiend works wi’ his own—smooth and sly sometimes, as if butter would not melt in her mouth.”
“’Tis an old sayin’—
“‘When the cat winketh,Little wots mouse what the cat thinketh,’”
“‘When the cat winketh,Little wots mouse what the cat thinketh,’”
“‘When the cat winketh,
Little wots mouse what the cat thinketh,’”
said Tom, with a grin and a wag of his head.
“She was neither sleek, nor soft, nor sly for that matter, when I saw her. I thought she’d a’ had her claws in my chops; such a catamaran I never did see.”
“And how’s the young lady?” asked Tom, clapping his greasy hat on his head.
“Hey! dear! I’m glad ye asked,” exclaimed the old woman—“easier she’ll be, no doubt, nowthatdevil’s gone. But, dearie me! all’s in a jumble till Master Charles comes back, for she’ll not know, poor thing, what she’s to do till he talks wi’ her—now all’s changed.”
And Mildred trotted off to see for herself, and to hear what the young lady might have to say.
Intheir homely sitting-room, with old Dulcibella in friendly attendance, Mildred Tarnley found Alice. It is not always that a dreadful impression makes itself immediately manifest. Nature rallies all her forces at first to meet the danger. A certain excitement of resistance sustains the system through a crisis of horror, and often for a long time after; and it is not until this extraordinary muster of the vital forces begins to dissolve and subside that the shattered condition of the normal powers begins to declare itself.
The scene which had just occurred was a dreadful ordeal for Alice. To recount, and with effort and minuteness, to gather into order the terrific incidents of the night preceding, relate them bit by bit to the magistrate as he wrote them down, make oath to their truth as the basis of a public prosecution, and most dreadful—the having to see and identify the spectre who had murderously assailed her on the night before.
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 cometo-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 despatched 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.
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, buttwowill 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 chimney-piece, 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. Iamtired, 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 to-morrow—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 insane, 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 didnotmeet 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 it’s 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 bank-note 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 sent 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 bank-note, 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.
Charlesrode 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, “Whatwashis 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 to-morrow.”
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 to-night 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.
“Oh, Ry, my own, my own husband, my Ry, he’s safe, he’s quite well. Come in. Thank God, he’s back again with his poor little wife, and oh, darling, we’ll never part again. Come in, come in, my darling.”
Old Mildred secured the door, and Tom took the horse round to the stable, and as she held her husband clasped in her arms, tears, long denied to her, came to her relief, and she wept long and convulsingly.
“Oh, Ry, it has been such a dreadful time; but you’re safe, aren’t you?”
“Quite. Oh! yes, quite darling—very well.”
“But, Oh, Ry, you look so tired. You’re not ill, are you, darling?”
“Not ill, only tired. Nothing, not much, tired and stupid, want of rest.”
“You must have some wine, you look so very ill.”
“Well, yes, I’m tired. Thanks, Mildred, that will do,” and he drank the glass of sherry she gave him.
“A drop more?” inquired old Mildred, holding the decanter stooped over his glass.
“No, thanks, no, I—it tastes oddly—or perhaps I’m not quite well after all.”
Charles now felt his mind clear again, and his retrospect was uncrossed by those spectral illusions of the memory that seem to threaten the brain with subjugation.
Better the finger of death than of madness should touch his brain, perhaps. His love for his wife, not dethroned, only in abeyance, was restored. Such dialogues as theirs are little interesting to any but the interlocutors.
With their fear and pain, agitated, troubled, there is love in their words. Those words, then, though in him, troubled with inward upbraidings, in her with secret fears and cares, are precious. There may not be many more between them.
A fewdays had passed and a great change had come. Charles Fairfield, the master of the Grange, lay in his bed, and the Wykeford doctor admitted to Alice that he could not say what might happen. It was a very grave case—fever—and the patient could not have been worse handled in those early days of the attack, on which sometimes so much depends.
People went to and fro on tiptoe, and talked in whispers, and the patient moaned, and prattled, unconscious generally of all that was passing. Awful hours and days of suspense! The Doctor said, and perhaps he was right, to kind Lady Wyndale, who came over to see Alice, and learned with consternation the state of things, that, under the special circumstances, her nerves having been so violently acted upon by terror, this diversion of pain and thought into quite another channel might be the best thing, on the whole, that could have happened to her.
It was now the sixth day of this undetermined ordeal.
Alice watched the Doctor’s countenance with her very soul in her eyes, as he made his inspection, standing at the bedside, and now and then putting a question to Dulcibella or to Alice, or to the nurse whom he had sent to do duty in the sick-room from Wykeford.
“Well?” whispered poor Alice, who had accompanied him downstairs, and pale as death, drew him into the sitting-room, and asked her question.
“Well, Doctor, what do you think to-day?”
“Not much to report. Very little change. We must have patience, you know, for a day or two; and you need not to be told, my dear ma’am, that good nursing is half the battle, and in better hands he need not be; I’m only afraid that you are undertaking too much yourself. That woman, Marks, you may rely upon, implicitly; a most respectable and intelligent person; I never knew her to make a mistake yet, and she has been more than ten years at this work.”
“Yes, I’m sure she is. I like her very much. And don’t you think him a little better?” she pleaded.
“Well, you know, as long as he holds his own and don’t lose ground, heisbetter; that’s all we can say; not to be worse, as time elapses, is in effect, to be better; that youmaysay.”
She was looking earnestly into the clear blue eyes of the old man, who turned them kindly upon her, from under his shaggy white eyebrows.
“Oh! thank God, then you do think him better?”
“In that sense, yes,” he answered cautiously, “but, of course, we must have patience, and we shall soon know more, a great deal more, and I do sincerely hope it may all turn out quite right; but the brain has been a good deal overpowered; there’s a tendency to a sort of state we call comatose; it indicates too much pressure there, d’ye see. I’d rather have him talking more nonsense, with less of that sleep, as you suppose it, but it isn’t sleep—a very different sort of thing. I’ve been trying to salivate him, but he’s plaguy obstinate. We’ll try to-night what dividing the pills into four each, and shortening the intervals a little will do; it sometimes does wonders—we’ll see—and a great deal depends on our succeeding in salivating. If we succeeded in effecting that, I think all the rest would proceed satisfactorily, that’s one of our difficulties just at this moment. If you send over your little messenger, the sooner the better, she shall have the pills, and let him take one the moment they come—pretty flower that is,” he interpolated, touching the petal of one that stood neglected, in its pot, on a little table at the window. “That’s not a geranium: it’s a pelargonium. I did not know there were such things down here—and you’ll continue, I told her everything else, and go on just as before.”
“And you think he’s better—I mean just a little?” she pleaded again.
“Well, well, you know, I said all I could, and we must hope—we must hope, you know, that everything may go on satisfactorily, and I’ll go further. I’ll say I don’t see at all why we should despair of such a result. Keep up your spirits, ma’am, and be cheery. We’ll do our duty all, and leave the rest in the hands of God.”
“And I suppose, Dr. Willett, we shall see you to-morrow at the usual hour?”
“Certainly, ma’am, and I don’t think there will be any change to speak of till, probably, Thursday.”
And her heart sank down with one dreadful dive at mention of that day of trial that might so easily be a day of doom.
And she answered his farewell, and smiled faintly, and followed his steps through the passage, freezing with that fear, it seemed, that she did not breathe, and that her heart ceased beating, and that she glided like a spirit. She stopped, and he passed into the yard to his horse, turning his shrewd, pale face, with a smile and a nod, as he stepped across the door-stone, and he said—
“Good-bye, ma’am, and look out for me to-morrow as usual, and be cheery, mind. Look at the bright side, you know; there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”
She answered his smile as best she could, but her heart was full; an immense sorrow was there. She was frightened. She hurried into the homely sitting-room, and wept in an agony unspeakable.
The doctor, she saw, pitied and wished to cheer her; but how dreadful was his guarded language. She thought that he would speak to others in a different vein, and so, in fact, he did. His opinion was clear against Charles Fairfield’s chance of ever being on his feet again. “It was a great pity—a young fellow.” The doctor thought every one young whose years were ten less than his own. “A tall, handsome fellow like that, and Squire of Wyvern in a year or two, and a good-natured sort of fellow he heard. It was a pity, and that poor little wife of his—and likely to be a mother soon—God help her.”
Thedreaded day came and passed, and Charles Fairfield was not dead, but better. The fever was abating, but never did the vital spark burn lower in living man. Seeing that life was so low in his patient, that there was nothing between it and death, the doctor ordered certain measures to be taken.
“The fever is going, you see, but his strength is not coming, nor won’t for a while. It’s a very nice thing, I can tell you, to bring him to land with such fine tackle. I’ve brought a salmon ten pound weight into my net with a bit of a trout rod as light as a rush almost. But this is nicer play—not, mind you, that I’d have you in the dumps, ma’am, but it will be necessary to watch him as a cat would a mouse. Now, you’ll have on the table by his bed three bottles—decanted all, and ready for use instantaneously. Beside that claret you’ll have a bottle of port, and you must also have a bottle of brandy. He’ll be always at his tricks, going to faint, and you mustn’t let him. Because, ma’am, it might not be easy to get him out of such a faint, and a faint is death, ma’am, if it lasts long enough. Now, you’re not to be frightened.”
“Oh, no, Doctor Willett.”
“No,thatwould not do neither; but I want you clearly to see the importance of it. Let him have the claret to his lips constantly—in a tumbler, mind—you can’t give him too much; and whenever you see him look faint, you must reinforce that with port; and no mincing of matters—none of your half measures. I’d rather you made him drunk three times a day than run the least risk once of the other thing; and if the port doesn’t get him up quick enough, you must fire away with the brandy; and don’t spare it—don’t be afraid—we’ll get him round, in time, with jellies and other good things; but life must be maintained in the meanwhile any way—every way—whatever way we can. So mind,three—claret, port, brandy.”
He held up three fingers as he named them, touching them in succession.
“That’s a fire it’s better should burn a bit too fiercely for an hour than sink too low for a second; once out, out for ever.”
“Thanks, Doctor Willett, I understand quite; and you’ll be here to-morrow, won’t you, at the usual hour?”
“Certainly, ma’am, and it’s high time you should begin to take a little care of yourself; you must, indeed, or you’ll rue it; you’re too much on your feet, and you have had no rest night or day, and it’s quite necessary you should, unless you mean to put yourself out of the world, which would not do at all. We can’t spare you, ma’am, we can’t indeed—a deal too valuable.”
For some time Charles Fairfield continued in very much the same state. At the end of three or four days he signed faintly to Alice, who was in the room, with her large soft eyes gazing on the invalid, whenever she could look unperceived. She got up gently and came close to him.
“Yes, darling,” and she lowered her head that he might speak more easily.
Charles whispered—
“Quite well?”
“You feel quite well? Thank God,” she answered, her large eyes filling with tears.
“Not I—you,” he whispered with querulous impatience; “ain’t you?”
“Quite, darling.”
His fine blue Fairfield eyes were raised to her face.
With a short sigh, he whispered—
“I’m glad.”
She stooped gently and kissed his thin cheek.
“I’ve been dreaming so much,” he whispered. “Will you tell me exactly what happened—just before my illness—something happened here?”
In a low murmur she told him.
When she stopped he waited as if expecting more, and then he whispered—
“I thought so—yes.”
And he sighed heavily.
“You’re tired, darling,” she said; “you must take a little wine.”
“I hate it,” he whispered—“tired of it.”
“But, darling, the doctor says you must—and—for my sake won’t you?”
The faintest possible smile lighted his pale face.
“Kind,” he whispered.
And when she placed the glass of claret to his lips he sipped a little and turned away his head languidly.
“Enough. Bring me my dressing-case,” he whispered.
She did so.
“The key was in my purse, I think. Open it, Ally.”
She found the key and unlocked that inlaid box.
“Underneath there are two or three letters in a big envelope. Keep them for me; don’t part with them,” he whispered.
She lifted a long envelope containing some papers, and the faintest nod indicated that they were what he sought.
“Keep it safe. Put the case away.”
When she came back, looking at her, he raised his eyebrows ever so little, and moved his head. She understood his sign and stooped again to listen.
“She mustn’t be prosecuted, she’s mad—Ally, mind.”
“Darling, whatever you wish.”
“Good, Ally; that’s enough.”
There was a little pause.
“You did not take enough claret, darling Ry. Won’t you take a little more for your poor little Ally?” whispered she anxiously.
“I’m very well, darling; by-and-by sleep; is better.”
So he laid his cheek closer to the pillow and closed his eyes, and Alice Fairfield stole on tiptoe to her chair, and with another look at him and a deep sigh, she sat down and took her work.
Silent was the room, except for the low breathing of the invalid. Half an hour passed, and Alice stole softly to the bedside. He was awake, and said faintly—
“Was it your mother?”
“Who, darling?”
“Talking.”
“No one was talking, darling.”
“I saw her; I thought I heard—nother—some one talking.”
“No, darling Ry, nothing.”
“Dreams; yes,” he murmured, and was quiet again.
Sad and ominous seemed those little wanderings. But such things are common in sickness. It was simply weakness.
In a little time she came over softly, and sat down by his pillow.
“I was looking down, Ally,” he whispered.
“I’ll get it, darling. Something on the floor, is it?” she asked, looking down.
“No, down to my feet; it’s very long—stretched.”
“Are your feet warm, darling?”
“Quite,” and he sighed and closed his eyes.
She continued sitting by his pillow.
“When Willie died, my brother, I was just fifteen.”
Then came a pause.
“Willie was the handsomest,” he murmured on.
“Willie was elder—nineteen, very tall. Handsome Willie, he liked me the best. I cried a deal that day. I used to cry alone, every day in the orchard, or by the river. He’s in the churchyard at Wyvern. I wonder shall I see it any more. There was rain the day of the funeral, they say it is lucky. It was a long coffin, the Fairfields you know——”
“Darling Ry, you are talking too much, it will tire you; take ever so little claret, to please your poor little Ally.”
This time he did quite quietly, and then closed his eyes, and dozed.