THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
Of what happened next I have a strangely imperfect recollection. I
cannot tell you the intervals, or even the order, in which some of the
events occurred. It is not that the mist of time obscures it; what I do
recollect is dreadfully vivid; but there are spaces of the picture gone.
I see faces of angels, and faces that make my heart sink; fragments of
scenes. It is like something reflected in the pieces of a smashed
looking-glass.
I have told you very little of Helen, my sister, my one darling on
earth. There are things which people, after an interval of half a life,
have continually present to their minds, but cannot speak of. The idea
of opening them to strangers is insupportable. A sense of profanation
shuts the door, and we "wake" our dead alone. I could not have told you
what I am going to write. I did not intend inscribing here more than the
short, bleak result. But I write it as if to myself, and I will get
through it.
To you it may seem that I make too much of this, which is, as Hamlet
says, "common." But you have not known what it is to be for all your
early life shut out from all but one beloved companion, and never after
to have found another.
Helen had a cough, and Laura Grey had written to mamma, who was then in
Warwickshire, about it. She was referred to the Cardyllion doctor. He
came; he was a skilful man. There were the hushed, dreadful moments,
while he listened, through his stethoscope, thoughtfully, to the "still,
small voice" of fate, to us inaudible, pronouncing on the dread issues
of life or death.
"No sounder lungs in England," said Doctor Mervyn, looking up with a
congratulatory smile.
He told her, only, that she must not go in the way of cold, and
by-and-by sent her two bottles from his surgery; and so we were happy
once more.
But doctors' advices, like the warnings of fate, are seldom obeyed;
least of all by the young. Nelly's little pet-sparrow was ailing, or we
fancied it was. She and I were up every hour during the night to see
after it. Next evening Nelly had a slight pain in her chest. It became
worse, and by twelve o'clock was so intense that Laura Grey, in alarm,
sent to Cardyllion for the doctor. Thomas Jones came back without him,
after a delay of an hour. He had been called away to make a visit
somewhere, but the moment he came back he would come to Malory.
It came to be three o'clock; he had not appeared; darling Nelly was in
actual torture. Again Doctor Mervyn was sent for; and again, after a
delay, the messenger returned with the same dismaying answer. The
governess and Rebecca Torkill exhausted in vain their little list of
remedies. I was growing terrified. Intuitively I perceived the danger.
The doctor was my last earthly hope. Death, I saw, was drawing nearer
and nearer every moment, and the doctor might be ten miles away. Think
what it was to stand, helpless, by her. Can I ever forget her poor
little face, flushed scarlet, and gasping and catching at breath, hands,
throat, every sinew quivering in the mortal struggle!
At last a knock and a ring at the hall-door. I rushed to the window; the
first chill grey of winter's dawn hung sicklily over the landscape. No
one was on the steps, or on the grey gravel of the court. But, yes--I do
hear voices and steps upon the stair approaching. Oh! Heaven be thanked,
the doctor is come at last!
I ran out upon the lobby, just as I was, in my dressing-gown, with my
hair about my shoulders, and slippers on my bare feet. A candlestick,
with the candle burnt low, was standing on the broad head of the clumsy
old bannister, and Mr. Carmel, in a black riding-coat, with his hat in
his hand, and that kind of riding-boots that used to be called clerical,
on, was talking in a low, earnest tone to our governess.
The faint grey from the low lobby window was lost at this point, and the
delicate features of the pale ecclesiastic, and Miss Grey's pretty and
anxious face, were lighted, like a fine portrait of Schalken's, by the
candle only.
Throughout this time of agony and tumult, the memory of my retina
remains unimpaired, and every picture retains its hold upon my brain.
And, oh! had the doctor come? Yes, Mr. Carmel had ridden all the way,
fourteen miles, to Llwynan, and brought the doctor back with him. He
might not have been here for hours otherwise. He was now downstairs
making preparations, and would be in the room in a few minutes.
I looked at that fine, melancholy, energetic face as if he had saved me.
I could not thank him. I turned and entered our room again, and told
Nelly to be of good courage, that the doctor was come. "And, oh! please
God, he'll do you good, my own darling, darling--precious darling!"
In a minute more the doctor was in the room. My eyes were fixed upon his
face as he talked to his poor little patient; he did not look at all as
he had done on his former visit. I see him before me as I write; his
bald head shining in the candle-light, his dissatisfied and gloomy face,
and his shrewd light blue eyes, reading her looks askance, as his
fingers rested on her pulse.
I remember, as if the sick-room had changed into it, finding myself in
the small room opposite, with no one there but the doctor and Miss Grey,
we three, in the cold morning light, and his saying, "Well all this
comes of violating directions. There is very intense inflammation, and
her chest is in a most critical state."
Then Miss Grey said, after a moment's hush, the awful words, "Is there
any danger?" and he answered shortly, "I wish I could say there wasn't."
I felt my ears sing as if a pistol had been fired. No one spoke for
another minute or more.
The doctor stayed, I think, for a long time, and he must have returned
after, for he mixed up in almost every scene I can remember during that
jumbled day of terror.
There was, I know, but one day, and part of a night. But it seems to me
as if whole nights intervened, and suns set and rose, and days uncounted
and undistinguished passed, in that miserable period.
The pain subsided, but worse followed; a dreadful cough, that never
ceased--a long, agonised struggle against a slow drowning of the lungs.
The doctor gave her up. They wanted me to leave the room, but I could
not.
The hour had come at last, and she was gone. The wild cry--the terrible
farewell--nothing can move inexorable death. All was still.
As the ship lies serene in the caverns of the cold sea, and feels no
more the fury of the wind, the strain of cable, and the crash of wave,
this forlorn wreck lay quiet now. Oh! little Nelly! I could not believe
it.
She lay in her nightdress under the white coverlet. Was this whole scene
an awful vision, and was my heart breaking in vain? Oh, poor simple
little Nelly, to think that you should have changed into anything so
sublime and terrible!
I stood dumb by the bedside, staring at the white face that was never to
move again. Such a look I had never seen before. The white glory of an
angel was upon it.
Rebecca Torkill spoke to me, I think. I remember her kind, sorrowful old
face near me, but I did not hear what she said. I was in a stupor, or a
trance. I had not shed a tear; I had not said a word. For a time I was
all but mad. In the light of that beautiful transfiguration my heart was
bursting with the wildest rebellion against the law of death that had
murdered my innocent sister before my eyes; against the fate of which
humanity is the sport; against the awful Power who made us! What spirit
knows, till the hour of temptation, the height or depth of its own
impiety?
Oh, gentle, patient little Nelly! The only good thing I can see in
myself in those days is my tender love of you, and my deep inward
certainty of my immeasurable inferiority. Gentle, humble little Nelly,
who thought me so excelling in cleverness, in wisdom, and countless
other perfections, how humble in my secret soul I felt myself beside
you, although I was too proud to say so! In your presence my fierce
earthy nature stood revealed, and wherever I looked my shadow was cast
along the ground by the pure light that shone from you.
I don't know what time passed without a word falling from my lips. I
suppose people had other things to mind, and I was left to myself. But
Laura Grey stole her hand into mine, she kissed me, and I felt her tears
on my cheek.
"Ethel, darling, come with me," she said, crying, very gently. "You can
come back again. You'll come with me, won't you? Our darling is happier,
Ethel, than ever she could have been on earth, and she will never know
change or sorrow again."
I began to sob distractedly. I do really believe I was half out of my
mind. I began to talk to her volubly, vehemently, crying passionately
all the time. I do not remember now a word I uttered; I know its purport
only from the pain, and even horror, I remember in Laura Grey's pale
face. It has taken a long and terrible discipline to expel that evil
spirit. I know what I was in those days. My pilgrimage since then has
been by steep and solitary paths, in great dangers, in darkness, in
fear; I have eaten the bread of affliction, and my drink has been of the
waters of bitterness; I am tired and footsore yet, though through a
glass darkly, I think I can now see why it all was, and I thank God with
a contrite heart for the terrors and the mercies he has shown me. I
begin to discover through the mist who was the one friend who never
forsook me through all those stupendous wanderings, and I long for the
time when I shall close my tired eyes, all being over, and lie at the
feet of my Saviour.