COLD STEEL.
I am quite certain now that the impious sophistries to which some proud
minds in affliction abandon themselves, are the direful suggestions of
intelligences immensely superior in power to themselves. When they call
to us in the air we listen; when they knock at the door we go down and
open to them; we take them in to sup with us, we make them our guests,
they become sojourners in the house, and are about our paths, and about
our beds, and spying out all our ways; their thoughts become our
thoughts, their wickedness our wickedness, their purposes our purposes,
till, without perceiving it, we are their slaves. And then when a fit
opportunity presents itself, they make, in Doctor Johnson's phrase, "a
snatch of us." Something like this was near happening to me. You shall
hear.
I grew, on a sudden, faint and cold; a horror of returning home stole
over me. I could not go home, and yet I had no other choice but death. I
had scarcely thought of death, when a longing seized me. Death grew so
beautiful in my eyes! The false smile, the mysterious welcome, the sweep
of deep waters, the vague allurement of a profound endless welcome, drew
me on and on.
Two men chatting passed me by as one said to the other, "The tide's full
in at Waterloo Bridge now; the moon must look quite lovely there." It
was spoken in harmony with my thoughts. I had read in my happier days
in the papers how poor girls had ended their misery by climbing over the
balustrade of Waterloo Bridge, over the black abyss, dotted with the
reflected lamps, and stepping off it into the dark air into death. I was
going now to that bridge--people would direct me--by the time I reached
it the thoroughfare would be still and deserted enough. I can't say I
had determined upon this--I can't say I ever thought about it--it was
only that the scene and the event had taken possession of me, with the
longing of a child for its home.
The streets were quieter now; but some shops were still open. Among
these was a jeweller's. The shutters were up, and only the door open. I
stepped in, I don't in the least know why. The fever, I suppose, had
touched my brain. There were only three men in the shop--one behind the
counter, a smiling, ceremonious man, whom I believe to have been the
owner--the two others were customers. One was a young man, sitting on a
chair with his elbow on the counter, examining and turning over some
jewellery that glittered in a little heap on the counter. The other,
older and dressed in black, was leaning over the counter, with his back
to me, and discussing, in low, careless tones, the merits of a dagger,
which, from their talk, not distinctly heard, I conjectured the young
man had been recommending as a specific against garotters. I was in no
condition to comprehend or care for the debate. The elder man, as he
talked, sometimes laid the little weapon down upon the counter, and
sometimes took it up, fitting it in his hand.
The intense light of the gas striking on my eyes made them ache acutely.
I don't know why, or how, I entered the shop; I only know that I found
myself standing within the door in a blaze of gaslight.
The jeweller, looking at me sharply across the counter, said:
"Well, ma'am?"
I answered:
"Can you give me change for a sovereign?"
I must have been losing my head; for though I spoke in perfect good
faith, I had not a shilling about me. It was not forgetfulness, but
distinctly an illusion; for I not only had the picture of the imaginary
sovereign distinctly before me, but thought I had it actually in my
hand.
The jeweller was talking in subdued and urbane accents to his customer,
and pointing out, no doubt, the special beauties and workmanship of his
_bijouterie_.
"Sorry I can't oblige you; you must try elsewhere," he said, again
directing a hard glance at me. I think he was satisfied that I was not a
thief; and he continued his talk with the young man who was making his
selection, and who was probably a little hard to please. I turned to
leave the shop, and the jeweller went into the next room, possibly in
search of something more likely to please his fastidious client at the
counter.
I had not yet seen the face of either of the visitors to the shop, but I
was conscious that the younger of the two had once or twice looked over
his shoulder at me. He now said, taking his purse from his pocket--it
was but as a parenthesis in his talk with his companion:
"I beg pardon; perhaps I can manage that change for you."
I drew nearer. What occurred next appeared to me like an incident in a
dream, in which our motives are often so obscure that our own acts take
us by surprise. Whether it was a mad moment or a lucid moment I don't
know; for in extreme misery, if our courage does not fail us, our
thoughts are always wicked.
I stood there, a slight figure, in crape, cloaked, veiled--in pain,
giddy, confused. I cannot tell you what interest the common-place
spectacle before me had for me, nor why I stayed there, gazing towards
the three gas lamps that seemed each girt with a dazzling halo that made
my eyes ache. What sounds and sights smote my sick senses with a jarring
recognition? The hard, nasal tones of the elderly man in black, who
leaned over the counter, and the pallid, scornful face, with its fine,
restless eyes and sinister energy, were those of Monsieur Droqville!
He was talking to his companion, and did not trouble himself to look at
me. He little dreamed what an image of death stood at his elbow!
They were not talking any longer about the pretty dagger that lay on
the counter, by his open fingers. Monsieur Droqville was now indulging
his cynical vein upon another theme. He was finishing a satirical
summing up of poor papa's character. I saw the sneer, the shrug; I heard
in his hard, bitter talk the name made sacred to me by unutterable
calamity; I listened to the outrage from the lips of the man who had
done all. Oh, beloved, ruined father! Can I ever forget the pale smile
of despair, the cold, piteous voice with which, on that frightful night,
he said, "Droqville has done it all--he has broken my heart." And here
was the very Droqville, with the scoff, the contempt, the triumph in his
pitiless face; and poor papa in his bloody shroud, and mamma dying! What
cared I what became of me? An icy chill seemed to stream from my brain
through me, to my feet, to my finger tips; as a shadow moves, I had
leaned over, and the hand that holds this pen had struck the dagger into
Droqville's breast.
In a moment his face darkened, with a horrified, vacant look. His mouth
opened, as if to speak or call out, but no sound came; his deep-set
eyes, fixed on me, were darkening; he was sinking backward, with a
groping motion of his hand, as if to ward off another blow.
Was it real? For a second I stared, freezing with horror; and then, with
a gasp, darted through the shop-door.
An accident, as I afterwards learned, had lamed Droqville's companion,
and thus favoured my escape. Before many seconds, however, pursuit was
on my track. I soon heard its cry and clatter. The street was empty when
I ran out. My echoing steps were the only sound there for some seconds.
I fled with the speed of the wind. I turned to the left down a narrow
street, and from that to the right into a kind of stable lane. I heard
shouting and footsteps in pursuit. I ran for some time, but the shouting
of sounds and pursuit continued. My strength failed me; I stopped short
behind a kind of buttress, beside a coach-house gate; I was hardly a
second there. An almost suicidal folly prompted me. I know not why, but
I stepped out again from my place of concealment, intending to give
myself up to my pursuers. I walked slowly back a few steps towards them.
One was now close to me. A man without a hat, crying, "Stop, stop,
police!" ran furiously past me. It clearly never entered his mind that
I, walking slowly towards him, could possibly be the fugitive.
So this moment, as I expected of perdition, passed innocuously by.
By what instinct, chance, or miracle I made the rest of my way home, I
know not. When I reached the door-stone, Rebecca Torkill was standing
there watching for me in irrepressible panic.
When she was sure it was I, she ran out, crying, "Oh! God be thanked,
miss, it's you, my child!" She caught me in her arms, and kissed me with
honest vehemence. I did not return her caress--I was worn out; it all
seemed like a frightful dream. Her voice sounded ever so far away. I saw
her, as raving people see objects mixed with unrealities. I did not say
a word as she conveyed me upstairs with her stalwart arm round my waist.
I heard her say, "Your mamma's better; she's quite easy now." I could
not say, "Thank God!" I was conscious that I showed no trace of
pleasure, nor even of comprehension, in my looks.
She was looking anxiously in my face as she talked to me, and led me
into the drawing-room. I did not utter a word, nor look to the right or
left. With a moan I sat down on the sofa. I was shivering
uncontrollably.
Another phantom was now before me, talking with Rebecca. It was Mr.
Carmel; his large, strange eyes--how dark and haggard they looked--fixed
on my face with a gaze almost of agony! Something fell from my hand on
the table as my fingers relaxed. I had forgotten that I held anything in
them. I saw them both look at it, and then on one another with a glance
of alarm, and even horror. It was the dagger, stained with blood, that
had dropped upon that homely table.
I was unable to follow their talk. I saw him take it up quickly, and
look from it to me, and to Rebecca again, with a horrible uncertainty.
It was, indeed, a rather sinister waif to find in the hand of a person
evidently so ill as I was, especially with a mark of blood also upon
that trembling hand. He looked at it again very carefully; then he put
it into Rebecca's hand, and said something very earnestly.
They talked on for a time. I neither understood nor cared what they
said; nor cared, indeed, at all what became of me.
"You're not hurt, darling?" she whispered, with her earnest old eyes
very near mine.
"I? No. Oh, no!" I answered.
"Not with that knife?"
"No," I repeated.
I was rapidly growing worse.
A little time passed thus, and then I saw Mr. Carmel pray with his hands
clasped for a few moments, and I heard him distinctly say to Rebecca,
"She's very ill. I'll go for the doctor;" and he added some words to
her. He looked ghastly pale: as he gazed in my face, his eyes seemed to
burn into my brain. Then another figure was added to the group; our maid
glided in, and stood beside Rebecca Torkill, and as it seemed to me,
murmured vaguely. I could not understand what she or they said. She
looked as frightened as the rest. I had perception enough left to feel
that they all thought me dying. So the thought filled my darkened mind
that I was indeed passing into the state of the dead. The black curtain
that had been suspended over me for so long at last descended, and I
remember no more for many days and nights.
The secret was, for the present, mine only. I lay, as the old writers
say, "at God's mercy," the sword's point at my throat, in the privation,
darkness, and utter helplessness of fever. Safe enough it was with me.
My brain could recall nothing; my lips were sealed. But though I was
speechless, another person was quickly in possession of the secret.
Some weeks, as I have said, are simply struck out of my existence. When
gradually the cold, grey light of returning life stole in upon me, I
almost hoped it might be fallacious. I hated to come back to the
frightful routine of existence. I was so very weak that even after the
fever left me I might easily have died at any moment.
I was promoted at length to the easy-chair, in which, in dressing-gown
and slippers, people recover from dangerous illness. There, in the
listlessness of exhaustion, I used to sit for hours, without reading,
without speaking, without even thinking. Gradually, by little, my spirit
revived, and, as life returned, the black cares and fears essential to
existence glided in, and gathered round with awful faces.
One day old Rebecca, who, no doubt, had long been anxious, asked:
"How did you come by that knife, Miss Ethel, that you fetched home in
your hand the night you took ill?"
"A knife? Did I?" I spoke, quietly suppressing my horror. "What was it
like?"
I was almost unconscious until then that I had really taken away the
dagger in my hand. This speech of Rebecca's nearly killed me. They were
the first words I had heard connecting me distinctly with that ghastly
scene.
She described it, and repeated her question.
"Where is it?" I asked.
"Mr. Carmel took it away with him," she replied, "the same night."
"Mr. Carmel?" I repeated, remembering with a new terror his connexion
with Monsieur Droqville. "You had no business to allow him to see it,
much less--good Heaven!--to take it."
I stood up in my terror, but I was too weak, and stumbled back into the
chair.
I would answer no question of hers. She saw that she was agitating me,
and desisted.
The whole scene in the jeweller's shop remained emblazoned in vivid
tints and lights on my memory. But there was something more, and that
perhaps the most terrible ingredient in it.
I had recognised another face besides Droqville's. It started between me
and the wounded man as I recoiled from my own blow. One hand was
extended towards me, to prevent my repeating the stroke--the other held
up the wounded man.
Sometimes I doubted whether the whole of that frightful episode was not
an illusion. Sometimes it seemed only that the pale face, so much
younger and handsomer than Monsieur Droqville's--the fiery eyes, the
frown, the scarred forehead, the suspended smile that had for only that
dreadful moment started into light before me so close to my face, were
those of a spectre.
The young man who had been turning over the jewels at the counter, and
who had offered to give me change for my imaginary sovereign, was the
very man I had seen shipwrecked at Malory; the man who had in the wood
near Plas Ylwd fought that secret duel; and who had afterwards made,
with so reckless an audacity, those mad declarations of love to me; the
man who, for a time, had so haunted my imagination, and respecting whom
I had received warnings so dark and formidable.
Nothing could be more vivid than this picture, nothing more uncertain
than its reality. I did not see recognition in the face; all was so
instantaneous. Well, I cared not. I was dying. What was the world to me?
I had assigned myself to death; and I was willing to accept that fate
rather than re-ascend to my frightful life.
My poor mother, who knew nothing of my strange adventure, had
experienced one of those deceitful rallies which sometimes seem to
promise a long reprieve, in that form of heart-complaint under which she
suffered. She only knew that I had had brain-fever. How near to death I
had been she never knew. She was spared, too, the horror of my dreadful
adventure. I was now recovering rapidly and surely; but I was so utterly
weak and heart-broken that I fancied I must die, and thought that they
were either deceived themselves, or trying kindly, but in vain, to
deceive me. I was at length convinced by finding myself able, as I have
said, to sit up. Mamma was often with me, cheered by my recovery, I dare
say she had been more alarmed than Rebecca supposed.
I learned from mamma that the money that had maintained us through my
illness had come from Mr. Carmel. Little as it was, it must have cost
him exertion to get it; for men in his position cannot, I believe, own
money of their own. It was very kind. I said nothing, but I was
grateful; his immovable fidelity touched me deeply. I wondered whether
Mr. Carmel had often made inquiries during my illness, or had shown an
interest in my recovery. But I dared not ask.