"But what is it, Miss, what is it? Are you ill? Why, Miss, you haven't
taken your things off; you haven't been to bed."
"No, I lay down.... I have had frightful dreams--that is all."
"But you must be ill, Miss; you look dreadful, Miss. Shall I tell Mr
Hare? Perhaps the doctor had better be sent for."
"No, no; pray say nothing about me. Tell my father that I did not sleep,
that I am going to lie down for a little while, that he is not to expect
me down for breakfast."
"I really think, Miss, that it would be as well for you to see the
doctor."
"No, no, no. I am going to lie down, and I am not to be disturbed."
"Shall I fill the bath, Miss? Shall I leave hot water here, Miss?"
"Bath.... Hot water...." Kitty repeated the words over as if she were
striving to grasp a meaning which was suggested, but which eluded her.
Then her face relaxed, the expression was one of pitiful despair, and
that expression gave way to a sense of nausea, expressed by a quick
contraction of the eyes.
She listened to the splashing of the water, and its echoes were repeated
indefinably through her soul.
The maid left the room. Kitty's attention was attracted to her dress. It
was torn, it was muddy, there were bits of furze sticking to it. She
picked these off, and slowly she commenced settling it: but as she did
so, remembrance, accurate and simple recollection of facts, returned to
her, and the succession was so complete that the effect was equivalent
to a re-enduring of the crime, and with a foreknowledge of it, as if to
sharpen its horror and increase the sense of the pollution. The lovely
hills, the engirdling sea, the sweet glow of evening--she saw it all
again. And as if afraid that her brain, now strained like a body on the
rack, would suddenly snap, she threw up her arms, and began to take off
her dress, as violently as if she would hush thought in abrupt
movements. In a moment she was in stays and petticoat. The delicate and
almost girlish arms were disfigured by great bruises. Great black and
blue stains were spreading through the skin.
Kitty lifted up her arm: she looked at it in surprise; then in horror
she rushed to the door where her dressing gown was hanging, and wrapped
herself in it tightly, hid herself in it so that no bit of her flesh
could be seen.
She threw herself madly on the bed. She moved, pressing herself against
the mattress as if she would rub away, free herself from her loathed
self. The sight of her hand was horrible to her, and she covered it over
hurriedly.
The maid came up with a tray. The trivial jingle of the cups and plates
was another suffering added to the ever increasing stress of mind, and
now each memory was accompanied by sensations of physical sickness, of
nausea.
She slipped from the bed and locked the door. Again she was alone. An
hour passed.
Her father came up. His footsteps on the stairs caused her intolerable
anguish. On entering the house she had hated to hear his voice, and now
that hatred was intensified a thousandfold. His voice sounded in her
ears false, ominous, abominable. She could not have opened the door to
him, and the effort required to speak a few words, to say she was tired
and wished to be left alone, was so great that it almost cost her her
reason. It was a great relief to hear him go. She asked herself why she
hated to hear his voice, but before she could answer a sudden
recollection of the tramp sprang upon her. Her nostrils recalled the
smell, and her eyes saw the long, thin nose and the dull liquorish eyes
beside her on the pillow.
She got up and walked about the room, and its appearance contrasted
with and aggravated the fierceness of the fever of passion and horror
that raged within her. The homeliness of the teacups and the plates, the
tin bath, painted yellow and white, so grotesque and so trim.
But not its water nor even the waves of the great sea would wash away
remembrance. She pressed her face against the pane. The wide sea, so
peaceful, so serene! Oblivion, oblivion, O for the waters of oblivion!
Then for an hour she almost forgot; sometimes she listened, and the
shrill singing of the canary was mixed with thoughts of her dead
brothers and sisters, of her mother. She was waked from her reveries by
the farm bell ringing the labourers' dinner hour.
Night had been fearsome with darkness and dreams, but the genial
sunlight and the continuous externality of the daytime acted on her
mind, and turned vague thoughts, as it were, into sentences, printed in
clear type. She often thought she was dead, and she favoured this idea,
but she was never wholly dead. She was a lost soul wandering on those
desolate hills, the gloom descending, and Brighton and Southwick and
Shoreham and Worthing gleaming along the sea banks of a purple sea.
There were phantoms--there were two phantoms. One turned to reality, and
she walked by her lover's side, talking of Italy. Then he disappeared,
and she shrank from the horrible tramp; then both men grew confused in
her mind, and in despair she threw herself on her bed. Raising her eyes
she caught sight of her prayer-book, but she turned from it moaning, for
her misery was too deep for prayer.
The lunch bell rang. She listened to the footsteps on the staircase; she
begged to be excused, and she refused to open the door.
The day grew into afternoon. She awoke from a dreamless sleep of about
an hour, and still under its soothing influence, she pinned up her
hair, settled the ribbons of her dressing gown, and went downstairs. She
found her father and John in the drawing-room.
"Oh, here is Kitty!" they exclaimed.
"But what is the matter, dear? Why are you not dressed?" said Mr Hare.
"But what is the matter.... Are you ill?" said John, and he extended his
hand.
"No, no, 'tis nothing," she replied, and avoiding the outstretched hand
with a shudder, she took the seat furthest away from her father and
lover.
They looked at her in amazement, and she at them in fear and trembling.
She was conscious of two very distinct sensations--one the result of
reason, the other of madness. She was not ignorant of the causes of
each, although she was powerless to repress one in favour of the other.
Both struggled for mastery and for the moment without disturbing the
equipoise. On the side of reason she knew very well she was looking at
and talking to her dear, kind father, and that the young man sitting
next him was John Norton, the son of her dear friend, Mrs Norton; she
knew he was the young man who loved her, and whom she was going to
marry, marry, marry. On the other side she saw that her father's kind
benign countenance was not a real face, but a mask which he wore over
another face, and which, should the mask slip--and she prayed that it
might not--would prove as horrible and revolting as--
But the mask John wore was as nothing, it was the veriest make believe.
And she could not but doubt now but that the face she had known him so
long by was a fictitious face, and as the hallucination strengthened,
she saw his large mild eyes grow small, and that vague dreamy look
turn to the dull liquorish look, the chin came forward, the brows
contracted ... the large sinewy hands were, oh, so like! Then reason
asserted itself; the vision vanished, and she saw John Norton as she
had always seen him.
But was she sure that she did? Yes, yes--she must not give way. But her
head seemed to be growing lighter, and she did not appear to be able to
judge things exactly as she should; a sort of new world seemed to be
slipping like a painted veil between her and the old. She must resist.
John and Mr Hare looked at her.
John at length rose, and advancing to her, said, "My dear Kitty, I am
afraid you are not well...."
She strove to allow him to take her hand, but she could not overcome the
instinctive feeling which, against her will, caused her to shrink from
him.
"Oh, don't come near me, I cannot bear it!" she cried, "don't come near
me, I beg of you."
More than this she could not do, and giving way utterly, she shrieked
and rushed from the room. She rushed upstairs. She stood in the middle
of the floor listening to the silence, her thoughts falling about her
like shaken leaves. It was as if a thunderbolt had destroyed the world,
and left her alone in a desert. The furniture of the room, the bed, the
chairs, the books she loved, seemed to have become as grains of sand,
and she forgot all connection between them and herself. She pressed her
hands to her forehead, and strove to separate the horror that crowded
upon her. But all was now one horror--the lonely hills were in the room,
the grey sky, the green furze, the tramp; she was again fighting
furiously with him; and her lover and her father and all sense of the
world's life grew dark in the storm of madness. Suddenly she felt
something on her neck. She put her hand up ...
And now with madness on her face she caught up a pair of scissors and
cut off her hair: one after the other the great tresses of gold and
brown fell, until the floor was strewn with them.
A step was heard on the stairs; her quick ears caught the sound, and she
rushed to the door to lock it. But she was too late. John held it fast.
"Kitty, Kitty," he cried, "for God's sake, tell me what is the matter!"
"Save me! save me!" she cried, and she forced the door against him with
her whole strength. He was, however, determined on questioning her, on
seeing her, and he passed his head and shoulders into the room. His
heart quailed at the face he saw.
For now had gone that imperceptible something which divides the life of
the sane from that of the insane, and he who had so long feared lest a
woman might soil the elegant sanctity of his life, disappeared forever
from the mind of her whom he had learned to love, and existed to her
only as the foul dull brute who had outraged her on the hills.
"Save me, save me! help, help!" she cried, retreating from him.
"Kitty, Kitty, what do you mean? Say, say--"
"Save me; oh mercy, mercy! Let me go, and I will never say I saw you, I
will not tell anything. Let me go!" she cried, retreating towards the
window.
"For Heaven's sake, Kitty, take care--the window, the window!"
But Kitty heard nothing, knew nothing, was conscious of nothing but a
mad desire to escape. The window was lifted high--high above her head,
and her face distorted with fear, she stood amid the soft greenery of
the Virginia creeper.
"Save me," she cried, "mercy, mercy!"
"Kitty, Kitty darling!"
* * * * *
The white dress passed through the green leaves. John heard a dull thud.