_JANE'S REVENGE._
For very fear unnethës may she go,
She weeped, wailed, all a day or two,
And swooned, that it ruthe was to see.
Jane Rodgers had discussed the bacon, and, as she was a tidy woman, the
plate was put carefully aside for washing while she ruminated quietly
over her last cup of tea--a particularly good one, black as ink, hot as
an earthenware pot that had been some time on the hob could make it,
rendered delicate by a few drops of rich, yellow cream, and extremely
palatable by two lumps of white sugar.
Jane was not always so extravagant, but tea was her weak point. Her
hard face looked almost pleasant for the moment, she was so thoroughly
comfortable.
Apparently the meditations that enlivened the kindly cup were of an
agreeable nature, for she smiled once or twice, and occasionally cast
a glance of infinite content on the dresser, where, nestling among the
bright crockery, lay a little knitted purse, from the meshes of which
something closely resembling yellow gold was gleaming. A large black
cat was purring by the fire; in her satisfaction Jane stooped and
stroked its soft fur caressingly. But nothing in the house seemed to be
stirring, and, in spite of her pleasant reflections and the abundant
comfort that surrounded her, Jane began to feel, as the darkness
gathered, a certain creeping sense of uneasiness. She addressed the
cat, for when people feel this loneliness even a dumb creature seems
a companion. "Pussy," she said, stooping again to caress it, "it's
lonesome here to-night. What's _she_ doing, I wonder, up there by
herself? We'll light the candles and take them up."
As Jane spoke she rose from her seat and stretched out her hand to take
the lucifer matches from the chimney-piece. But she did not draw it
back so quickly. Her hand was stayed by a sudden horror. The stillness
in the house was broken. There came from overhead the sound of a dull
thud, as if a body had fallen heavily to the ground. The sound was
followed by a silence more oppressive even than before.
Jane Rodgers was a coward, and like many uneducated people extremely
superstitious. The sound came from the room where she had left her
mistress about half an hour before, "looking," as she had expressed
it, "rather queer." She was the only person in the room; the sound had
come from a heavy fall. It must, then, have been Mrs. Grey herself who
had fallen. Had the trouble crushed her utterly? Was she dead? The bare
supposition sent every particle of blood from Jane's face. She turned
as pale as death. There rose up, in a grim host before her mind, some
of the many ghost-stories that are the terror of the ignorant. If she
were dead she would certainly return again to haunt the unfaithful
servant, for Jane had a vague idea that death could clear up mysteries.
And in what form would the injured lady come? Perhaps every evening at
nightfall that sound of heavy falling would be heard, only muffled and
terror-laden; perhaps as a sheeted ghost she would haunt the bedside
of her unfaithful servant; perhaps--But Jane could scarcely bear to
conjecture further; even certainty, however dreadful, would be better
than this vague sense of horror.
With a hand made tremulous by fear she lit a candle. From Ajax downward
human nature is the same. Whatever be the danger, darkness gives it an
added horror. Jane Rodgers with her candle in her hand felt much braver
than Jane Rodgers in the dark.
She paused for a moment on the threshold of Mrs. Grey's sitting-room,
and applied first her ear and then her eye to the keyhole. Her ear told
her that there was within the room a silence as of death; her eye could
distinguish nothing through the gloom. In her superstitious horror she
was on the point of running away from the door and from the house, but
there came another dim perspective of future uneasiness to delay her.
If the lady were indeed dead--and Jane had almost come to this
conclusion--it was a fact that could not be hidden. Her body would
be found, then the neighbors would talk, the inquest would follow,
and the cross-examination about her own whereabouts, as the landlady
and servant, at the time of the accident. How would she be able to
stand this? Then, if it should be found out that she, the pattern of
strong-mindedness, she who talked in the village about her experience
and knowledge of the world, who was known far and near as a person
equal to any emergency--that she had turned tail like a frightened dog
and fled from imaginary dangers, how would she bear the ridicule and
contempt of her fellows?
These last considerations decided her; she opened the door of her
mistress's sitting-room and peered in cautiously.
What she saw realized for the moment her worst fears. Margaret was
stretched on the carpet rigid and motionless, her hands were clenched,
her feet were drawn up under her; the attitude was that of one who had
suddenly yielded in a struggle with dire agony.
Shading her candle with her hand, for the night-winds were sweeping
through the room, and with a face almost as white as that she
looked on, Jane Rodgers crept near to the prostrate lady. Jane had
seen something of illness, and in her days of domestic service
had been considered a good nurse; indeed, she had looked, and
looked unflinchingly, on the face of death itself more than once
in her life. What alarmed her so much on this occasion was the
attendant circumstances, which had called into play the cowardly
and superstitious side of her nature. The white face of her wronged
mistress seemed to call for vengeance, while something whispered to
Jane that the vengeance would come, and in a terrible form.
But as she drew near to Margaret her terror grew less. Her experienced
eye, as soon as she was sufficiently herself to look at the matter
calmly, told her that this was not death, but only a kind of
fainting-fit, produced probably by strong mental excitement. Her first
feeling was one of intense relief--her second, of indignation against
the unconscious cause of her alarm.
"A body would think," she muttered, "that she'd done it a purpose."
As she spoke she lifted the fainting lady--without much difficulty,
for Margaret had grown very thin, and Jane's physical strength was
extraordinary--and laid her on the bed in the next room. Then with some
roughness she proceeded to use the various remedies--splashed water in
unnecessary quantities into her mistress's face, and rubbed Margaret's
soft palms with her bony fingers.
It was a rough and ready mode of proceeding, but it proved effectual.
Margaret opened her eyes and looked round her, perfectly bewildered at
her position. Jane Rodgers's hard face was the first object that met
her gaze; feeling round her, she discovered that water was dripping
from her face and hair.
She tried to rise. "Where am I?" she said faintly.
"Lie still," replied Jane authoritatively, holding her down with that
vice-like grasp which is so irritating to the weak. "You've been
and fainted," she continued sullenly--"Goodness knows for why--and
frightening the very breath out of my body; but if this kind of thing
is to go on, you must find some other place, or else get a woman in.
I've too much to do in the house to be giving _my_ time continual to
nurse-tending."
The rude speech was almost lost upon Margaret, for memory was awaking
from its sleep; the events of the day were returning gradually to her
mind. "Yes," she said slowly; "I remember now. I suppose I fainted."
Then rising to a sitting posture she fixed her large eyes on her
servant's face.
The face was so white in its strange chiselled beauty, the eyes were
so wild and mournful, that for the moment Jane's superstitious fears
returned.
"Lor!" she said hastily, "_don't_ look at a body like that, there's a
dear. Come--Miss Laura'll come back, never you fear. Children isn't
lost in that way."
"Where _is_ Miss Laura gone?" Margaret's voice was very low, her eyes
were still fixed on her servant's face.
Jane placed the candle on the table and turned aside to pull down the
window-blind and arrange the curtains. "I'll tell you all about it,"
she said soothingly, "if you'll lie down quiet. Miss Laura, she came
in alone, and I give her her dinner; after dinner she sits down with
her picture-book. Presently a gentleman came in at the garden-gate;
I, as it might be in the kitchen, see Miss Laura, from the window, a
running out, quite pleased like to meet him. Them two go into the
sitting-room, and then Miss Laura, she come running down into the
kitchen. 'Jane,' she says, 'my hat, quick; it's my papa, and we're
going to meet mamma on the sands,' Miss Laura, as your orders is,
mustn't never be contradicted, so I get her hat, and off they go
together through the garden-gate. I see them walk along the sands, and
thinks I to myself, 'I'll get tea ready, for they'll find missis, and
all come in together.' So now you know as much as I do, for Miss Laura
ain't come back all the afternoon."
As Jane spoke she turned her face, which expressed nothing but
conscious virtue, to her mistress. Margaret was writhing on the bed as
if she had been suffering from some keen physical pain.
"What was he like--this gentleman who came in I mean?" she asked in a
low, weak voice. A last hope, a very faint one, was struggling with her
misery.
"Difficult to say _exact_," replied Jane, rather hesitatingly; then,
as though repeating a lesson, "He be tall, as far as I remember, and
good-looking, dark hair and whiskers, and eyes like Miss Laura's own."
It was all Margaret wanted to know. "Thank you, Jane," she replied
quietly, "you may go now. Don't be alarmed," she continued, half
smiling, as the woman hesitated on the threshold, "I shall not faint
again."
"But you'll take something," said Jane, a certain feeling of
compunction pricking the small remnant of a heart she still possessed;
"come, have a glass of wine, like a dear."
"You may bring a glass and put it down by the bedside," she replied,
so calmly that Jane went away quite bewildered and a little frightened
still. "There," when she returned with the glass, "that will do; thank
you. Now good-night." When Jane had left her Margaret looked round, and
her worst enemy would have felt a pang of remorse could he have noted
the white, haggard desolation which that day's suffering had left upon
her face. Holding by the bed-post for support, she raised herself and
felt along by the bits of furniture till she came to Laura's little
cot. There she paused. Kneeling down beside it, she kissed the pillow
where the child's head had rested only the night before.
"My Laura," she murmured faintly, "my child--mine--mine;" and then
again, "His, not mine--mine no longer. God forgive me! I did not prize
my treasure, and now it is taken from me for ever."
The little pillow was clasped to the breast of the bereaved mother as
if it had been her child, for she scarcely knew what she was doing;
that torpor of brain had seized her once more. Sinking to the ground,
she rocked it to and fro in her arms, murmuring over it soft words of
endearment.
And thus at last sleep, the nursing-mother of the wretched, found
Margaret Grey. Well for her that it came when it did, for her mind
could scarcely have borne at this time a more continued pressure. With
her cheek resting on the pillow, which was wet with her abundant tears,
and her back against the iron supports of her child's bed, Margaret
forgot all her sorrow for the time in the arms of "Nature's sweet
restorer, balmy sleep."