"It is all over," said Maurice Evandale, looking gravely at the dead
woman's face. "It is all over, and may God have mercy upon her soul!"
He left Sabina, who was sobbing hysterically as she sat huddled up in
the chair on which he had placed her, and came to Enid's side. She
turned to him with sorrowful appeal.
"Is she dead? Can nothing be done?"
"Nothing. Come away, Miss Vane; this is no place for you. One moment!
Have you anything to say to this woman? Have you any charge to bring?"
He pointed to Sabina as he spoke, and she, roused for an instant, raised
a mute terrified face from her hands, and seemed to shrink still lower
in her chair, as if she would willingly have hidden herself and her
secret, whatever it might be, out of sight of all the world. She
waited--waited--evidently with dread--for the accusation that she
expected from Enid's lips. The Rector waited also, but the accusation
did not come. There was a moment's utter silence in the chamber of
death.
"Have you anything to say?" asked Maurice Evandale at last.
Then Enid spoke.
"No," she answered, with quivering lips; "I can say nothing. I--I
forgave her--before she died;" and then she turned away and went swiftly
out of the room, leaving the others to follow or linger as they pleased.
Sabina rose from her chair and stood as if dazed, stupefied by her
position. All her fierceness and defiance had left her; her face was
white, her eyes were downcast, her hands hung listlessly at her sides.
The Rector paused and spoke.
"You hear what Miss Vane said?"
She made no answer.
"I do not know what you or your mother may have done. Some secret guilt
evidently weighed upon her soul. Whatever it may be, she confessed her
guilt and received forgiveness. Sabina Meldreth, in the presence of your
dead mother and of your living God, I call upon you to do the same. If
you would find mercy in the hour of your own death, confess your sin,
whatever it may be, and you shall be forgiven."
Still she stood silent and almost motionless, but her teeth gnawed at
her white lips as if to bite them through.
"You will have no better time than the present," said the Rector. "If
there is anything that you feel should be confessed, confess it now. It
is God's voice calling to you, not mine. Your mother cleared her
conscience before she died, do you the same. I bid you in God's name."
Maurice Evandale did not often speak after this fashion; he was no
fanatic, no bigot, but he believed intensely in the great eternal truths
which he preached, and in the presence of death--in the presence also,
as he believed, of mortal sin--he could not do less than appeal to what
was highest and best in the nature of the woman before him. What she had
to accuse herself of he could not possibly imagine; but he knew that
there was something. By the dead woman's incoherent words, by Sabina
Meldreth's violence, by Enid's stricken look of perplexity and pain, he
knew that something lay hidden which ought to be brought to light.
The winter's day was drawing to a close. Through the uncurtained window
the light stole dimly, and the reddened coals in the tiny grate threw
but a feeble gleam into the room. In every corner shadows seemed to
cluster, and the dead woman's face looked horribly pale and ghastly in
the surrounding gloom. The Rector waited with a feeling that the moment
was unutterably solemn; that it was fraught with the destiny of a
suffering, sinning human being--for aught he knew, with the destinies of
more than one. Suddenly the woman before him threw up her hands as if to
shut out the sight of her dead mother's face.
"I have nothing to tell you--nothing!" she cried. "What business have
you here? You teased my mother out of her last few minutes of life, and
now you want to get the mastery over me! It's my house now, my room--not
my mother's--and you may go out of it."
"Is that all you have to say," asked the Rector gravely--"even in her
presence, Sabina Meldreth?"
"Yes, that's all," she answered, the old fierceness creeping back into
her tones. "What else should I have to say? I suppose you can have me
taken up for assault; Miss Vane will bear witness in your favor fast
enough, no doubt. I don't care!"
"Do you not care even when you think what I kept you back from?" said
Mr. Evandale. "Your mother was old, weak, dying, and you threw yourself
upon her with violence. You will remember that some day, and will bless
me perhaps because I withheld your hand. Your attack upon me matters
nothing. I am willing to believe that you did not know what you were
doing. I will leave you know--it is not seemly that we should discuss
this matter any further. But, if ever you want help or counsel--and the
day may come, my poor woman, when you may want both--then come to me."
He opened the door, went out, and closed it behind him, leaving Sabina
Meldreth alone with the dead.
He found two or three women down-stairs already; Enid Vane must have
told Polly, as she passed through the shop, that Mrs. Meldreth's end had
come. As soon as he had gone, two of them went up-stairs to perform the
necessary offices in the chamber of death. They found Sabina stretched
on the floor in a swoon, from which it was long before she recovered.
"You wouldn't ha' thought she had so much feeling in her," said one of
the women to the other, as they ministered to her wants.
Meanwhile the Rector strode down the village street, straining his eyes
in the twilight, and glancing eagerly from side to side, in his endeavor
to discover what had become of Miss Vane. He knew that she had probably
never been out so late unattended in her life before; lonely as her
existence seemed to be, she was well cared for, anxiously guarded, and
surrounded by every possible protection. He had been surprised to find
her in Mrs. Meldreth's cottage so late in the afternoon. Only the
exigencies of the situation had prevented him from following her at once
when she left the house--only the stern conviction that he must not, for
the sake of Miss Vane's bodily safety and comfort, neglect Sabina
Meldreth's soul. But, when he felt that his duty in the cottage was
over, he sallied forth in search of Enid Vane. She had been wearing a
long fur-lined cloak, he remembered, and on her head a little fur toque
to match. The colors of both were dark; at a distance she could not be
easily distinguished by her dress. And she had at least three-quarters
of a mile to walk--through the village, down-hill by the lane, past the
fir plantation where her father had been found murdered, and a little
way along the high-road--before she would reach her own park gate. The
Rector, like all strong men, was very tender and pitiful to the weak.
The thought of her feeling nervous and frightened in the darkness of the
lane was terrible to him; he felt as if she ought to be guarded and
guided throughout life by the fearless and the strong.
He walked down the street--it was a long straggling street such as often
forms the main thoroughfare of a country village--but he saw nothing of
Enid. At the end of the street were some better-built houses, with
gardens; then came the Rectory and the church. He paused instinctively
at the churchyard gate. Surely he saw something moving amongst the tombs
over there by the railed-in plot of ground that marked the vault, in
which lay the mortal remains of Sydney and Marion Vane? Had she gone
there? Was it Enid's slender form that crouched beside the railings in
the attitude of helpless sorrow and despair?
The Rector did not lose a moment in finding out. He threw open the gate,
dashed down the pathway, and was scarcely astonished to discover that
his fancy was correct. It was Enid Vane who had found her way to her
parents' grave, and had slipped down upon the frosted grass, half
kneeling, half lying against the iron rails.
One glance, and Evandale's heart gave a leap of terror. Had she fainted,
or was she dead? It was no warm, conscious, breathing woman whom he had
found--it was a rigid image of death, as stiff, as sightless, as
inanimate as the corpse that he had left behind. He bent down over her,
felt her pulse, and examined the pupils of her eyes. He had had some
medical training before he came to Beechfield, and his knowledge of
physiological details told him that this was no common faint--that the
girl was suffering from some strange cataleptic or nervous seizure, for
which ordinary remedies would be of no avail.
The Rectory garden opened into the churchyard. Maurice Evandale had not
a moment's hesitation in deciding what to do. He lifted the strangely
rigid, strangely heavy figure in his arms, and made his way along the
shadowy churchyard pathway to the garden gate. The great black yews
looked grim and ghostly as he left them behind and strode into his own
domain, where the flowers were all dead, and the leafless branches of
the fruit-trees waved their spectral arms above him as he passed. There
was something indefinably unhomelike and weird in the aspect of the most
familiar places in the winter twilight. But Maurice Evandale, by an
effort of his strong will, banished the fancies that came into his mind,
and fixed his thoughts entirely upon the girl he was carrying. How best
to restore her, what to do for her comfort and her welfare when she
awoke--these were the thoughts that engrossed his attention now.
He did not go to the front-door. He went to a long window which opened
upon the garden, and walked straight into his own study. A bright fire
burned in the grate; a lamp was placed on the table, where books and
papers were heaped in true bachelor confusion. A low broad sofa occupied
one side of the room; the Rector deposited his burden upon it, and then
devoted himself seriously to the consideration of the case before him.
Enid lay white, motionless, rigid, where he had placed her; her eyelids
were not quite closed, and the eyes were visible between the lids; her
lips were open, but the teeth were tightly closed; a slight froth showed
itself about her mouth.
"It is no faint," the Rector said to himself. "It is a fit, a nervous
seizure of some sort. If she does not revive in a minute or two, I shall
send for Ingledew"--Ingledew was the village doctor--"and in the
meantime I'll act on my own responsibility."
Certain reviving measures were tried by him, and apparently with
success. The bluish whiteness of the girl's face changed to a more
natural color, her teeth relaxed, her eyelids drooped. Evandale drew a
quick breath of relief when he saw the change. He was able to pour a few
drops of brandy down her throat, to chafe the unresisting hands, to
bathe the cold forehead with some hope of affording relief. He did all
as carefully and tenderly as if he had been a woman, and he did not seem
to wish for any other aid. Indeed he had locked the door when he first
came in, as if to guard against the chance of interruption.
Presently he heard her sigh; then tears appeared on her lashes and stole
down her cheeks. Her limbs fell into their natural position, and she put
up her hand at last with a feeble, uncertain movement, as if to wipe
away her tears. Evandale drew back a little--almost out of her sight. He
did not want to startle her.
"Where am I?" she said, in a tremulous voice.
"You are at the Rectory, Miss Vane," said Maurice Evandale quietly. "You
need not be at all alarmed; you may have heard that I am something of a
doctor, and, as I found that you did not seem well, I took the liberty
of bringing you here."
"I don't remember," she said softly, opening her blue eyes and looking
at him--without shyness, as he noticed, but with a kind of wistful
trust which appealed to all the tenderness of his nature. "Did I faint?"
There was a slight emphasis on the last word.
"You were unconscious for a time," said the Rector. "But I hope that you
feel better now."
She gave him a curious look--whether of shame or of reproach he could
not tell--then buried her face in the pillows and began to cry quietly,
with her fingers before her eyes.
"My dear Miss Vane, can I not do anything for you? I will call the
housekeeper," said the Rector, driven almost to desperation by the sight
of her tears. It was always very painful to him to see a woman cry.
"No, no!" she said, raising her head for a moment. "No--don't call any
one, please; I shall be better directly. I know what was the matter
now."
She dried her eyes and tried to calm herself, while the Rector stood by
the table in the middle of the room, nervously turning over books and
pamphlets, and pretending not to see that she was crying still.
"Mr. Evandale," she said at length, "I don't know how to thank you for
being so kind. I must tell you----"
"Don't tell me anything that is painful to you, Miss Vane."
"It will not be painful to tell you after your great kindness to me.
I--I am subject to these attacks. The doctors say that they do not
exactly understand the case, but they think that I shall outgrow them in
course of time. I have not had one for six months till to-night." She
burst into tears again.
"But, my dear child,"--he could not help saying it--the words slipped
from his lips against his will--"there is nothing to be so troubled
about; a little faintness now and then--many people suffer from it."
"Ah, you do not understand!" she said quickly. "It is not faintness at
all. I am often quite conscious all the time. I remember now how you
found me and brought me here. I was not insensible all the time, but I
cannot move or speak when I am like that. It has been so ever
since--ever since my father died." She lowered her voice, as if she were
telling something that was terrible to her.
"I see," said Mr. Evandale kindly--"it is an affection of the nerves,
which you will get over when you are stronger. I hope that you do not
make a trouble of that?" His eyes looked steadily into hers, and he
noted with pain the strange shadow that crossed them as he gazed.
"My uncle and his wife," she murmured, "will not let anybody know. They
are--they are ashamed of it, and of me. If I do not get better, they say
that I shall some day go out of my mind. Oh, it is terrible--terrible to
feel a doom of this sort hanging over one, and to know that nothing can
avert it! I had hoped that it was all over--that I should not have
another attack; but you see--you see that I hoped in vain! It is like a
black shadow always hanging over me, and nothing--nothing will ever take
it away!"