AN OMINOUS VISIT.
I have sometimes felt that, even without a revelation, we might have
discovered that the human race was born to immortality. Death is an
intrusion here. Children can't believe in it. When they see it first, it
strikes them with curiosity and wonder. It is a long time before they
comprehend its real character, or believe that it is common to all; to
the end of our days we are hardly quite sincere when we talk of our own
deaths.
Seeing mamma better, I thought no more of her danger than if the angel
of death had never been within our doors, and I had never seen the
passing shadow of that spectre in her room.
As my strength returned, I grew more and more gloomy and excited. I was
haunted by never-slumbering, and very reasonable, fore-castings of
danger. In the first place, I was quite in the dark as to whether
Monsieur Droqville was dangerously or mortally hurt, and I had no way of
learning anything of him. Rebecca, it is true, used to take in, for her
special edification, a Sunday paper, in which all the horrors of the
week were displayed, and she used to con it over regularly, day after
day, till the next number made its appearance. If Monsieur Droqville's
name, with which she was familiar, had occurred in this odious register,
she had at least had a fair chance of seeing it, and if she had seen it,
she would be pretty sure to have mentioned it. Secretly, however, I was
in miserable fear. Mr. Carmel had not returned since my recovery had
ceased to be doubtful, and he was in possession of the weapon that had
fallen from my hand.
In his retention of this damning piece of evidence, and his withdrawing
himself so carefully from my presence, coupled with my knowledge of the
principles that bound him to treat all private considerations, feelings,
and friendships as non-existent, when they stood ever so little in the
way of his all-pervading and supreme duty to his order--there was a
sinister augury. I lived in secret terror; no wonder I was not
recovering quickly.
One day, when we had sat a long time silent, I asked Rebecca how I was
dressed the night I had gone to Lord Chellwood's. I was immensely
relieved when she told me, among other things, that I had worn a thick
black veil. This was all I wanted to be assured of; for I could not
implicitly rely upon my recollection through the haze and mirage of
fever. It was some comfort to think that neither Monsieur Droqville nor
Mr. Marston could have recognised my features.
In this state of suspense I continued for two or three weeks. At the end
of that time a little adventure happened. I was sitting in an arm-chair,
in our drawing-room, with pillows about me, one afternoon, and had
fallen into a doze. Mamma was in the room, and, when I had last seen
her, was reading her Bible, which she now did sometimes for hours
together--sometimes with tears, always with the trembling interest of
one who has lost everything else.
I had fallen asleep. I was waked by tones that terrified me. I thought
that I was still dreaming, or that I had lost my reason. I heard the
nasal and energetic tones of Monsieur Droqville, talking with his
accustomed rapidity in the room--not to mamma, for, as I afterwards
found, she had left the room while I was asleep, but to Rebecca.
Happily for me, a screen stood between me and the door, and I suppose he
did not know that I was in the room. At every movement of his foot on
the floor, at every harsh emphasis in his talk, my heart bounded. I was
afraid to move, almost to breathe, lest I should draw his attention to
me.
My illness had quite unnerved me. I was afraid that, restless and
inquisitive as I knew him to be, he would peep round the screen, and see
and talk to me. I did not know the object of his visit; but in terror I
surmised it, and I lay among my pillows, motionless, and with my eyes
closed, while I heard him examine Rebecca, sharply, as to the date of my
illness, and the nature of it.
"When was Miss Ware last out, before her illness?" he asked at length.
"I could not tell you that exactly, sir," answered Rebecca, evasively.
"She left the house but seldom, just before she was took ill; for her
mamma being very bad, she was but little out of doors then."
He made a pretence of learning the facts of my case simply as a
physician, and he offered in that capacity to see me at the moment. He
asked the question in an off-hand way. "I can see her, I dare say? I'm a
doctor, you know. Where is Miss Ware?"
The moment of silence that intervened before her answer seemed to me to
last five minutes. She answered, however, quite firmly:
"No, sir; I thank you. She's attended by a doctor, quite reg'lar, and
she's asleep now."
Rebecca had heard me speak with horror of Monsieur Droqville, and did
not forget my antipathy.
He hesitated. I heard his fingers drumming, as he mused, upon the other
side of the screen.
"Well," he said, dwelling on the word meditatively, "it doesn't matter
much. I don't mind; only it might have been as well. However, you can
tell Mrs. Ware a note to my old quarters will find me, and I shall be
very happy."
And so saying, I heard him walk, at first slowly, from the room, and
then run briskly down the stairs. Then the old hall-door shut smartly
after him.
The fear that this man inspired, and not without reason, in my mind, was
indescribable. I can't be mistaken in my recollection upon that point,
for, as soon as he was gone, I fainted.
When I recovered, my fears returned. No one who has not experienced that
solitary horror, knows what it is to keep an undivulged secret, full of
danger, every hour inspiring some new terror, with no one to consult,
and no courage but your own to draw upon. Even mamma's dejected spirits
took fire at what she termed the audacity of Monsieur Droqville's visit.
My anger, greater than hers, was silenced by fear. Mamma was roused; she
ran volubly--though interrupted by many sobs and gushes of tears--over
the catalogue of her wrongs and miseries, all of which she laid to
Monsieur Droqville's charge.
The storm blew over, however, in an hour or so. But later in the evening
mamma was suffering under a return of her illness, brought on by her
agitation. It was not violent; still there was suffering; and, to me,
gloomier proof that her malady was established, and the grave in a
nearer perspective. This turned my alarms into a new channel.
She was very patient and gentle. As I sat by her bedside, looking at her
sad face, what unutterable tenderness, what sorrow trembled at my heart!
At about six o'clock she had fallen asleep, and with this quietude my
thoughts began to wander, and other fears returned. It was for no good,
I was sure, that Monsieur Droqville had tracked us to our dismal abode.
Whatever he might do in this affair of my crime, or mania, passion would
not guide it, nor merely social considerations; it would be directed by
a policy the principles of which I could not anticipate. I had no clue
to guide me; I was in utter darkness, and surrounded by all the fancies
that imagination conjures from the abyss.
I was not destined to wait very long in uncertainty.