DAY--TWILIGHT--DARKNESS.
In their 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 come _to-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.