Lady Carse did not awake till the afternoon of the next day; and then
she saw the housekeeper sitting knitting on the same chair, and looking
as if she had never stirred since she took her place there in the middle
of the night. The man was not there.
The woman cheerfully invited the lady to rise and refresh herself, and
come to the fire, and then go down and dine. But Lady Carse's spirit
was awake as soon as her eyes were. She said she would never rise--
never eat again. The woman begged her to think better of it, or she
should be obliged to call her husband to resume his watch, and to let
Mr Forster know of her refusal to take food. To this the poor lady
answered only by burying her face in the coverings, and remaining silent
and motionless, for all the woman could say.
In a little while, up came Mr Forster, with three Highlanders. They
lifted her, as if she had been a child, placed her in an easy chair by
the fireside, held back her head, and poured down her throat a basin
full of strong broth.
"It grieves me, madam," said Mr Forster, "to be compelled to treat you
thus--like a wayward child. But I am answerable for your life. You
will be fed in this way as often as you decline necessary food."
"I defy you still," she cried.
"Indeed!" said he, with a perplexed look. She had been searched by the
housekeeper in her sleep; and it was certain that no weapon and no drug
was about her person. She presently lay back in the chair, as if
wishing to sleep, throwing a shawl over her head; and all withdrew
except the housekeeper and her husband.
In a little while some movement was perceived under the shawl, and there
was a suppressed choking sound. The desperate woman was swallowing her
hair, in order to vomit up the nourishment she had taken--as another
lady in desperate circumstances once did to get rid of poison. The
housekeeper was ordered to cut off her hair, and Mr Forster then rather
rejoiced in this proof that she carried no means of destroying her life.
As soon as it was quite dark she was compelled to take more food, and
then wrapped up warmly for a night ride. Mr Forster invited her to
promise that she would not speak, that he might be spared the necessity
of bandaging her mouth. But she declared her intention of speaking on
every possible occasion; and she was therefore effectually prevented
from opening her mouth at all.
On they rode through the night, stopping to dismount only twice; and
then it was not at any house, but at mere sheepfolds, where a fire was
kindled by some of the party, and where they drank whisky, and laughed
and talked in the warmth and glow of the fire, as if the poor lady had
not been present. Between her internal passion, her need of more food
than she would take, the strangeness of the scene, with the sparkling
cold stars overhead, and the heat and glow of the fire under the wall--
amidst these distracting influences the lady felt confused and ill, and
would have been glad now to have been free to converse quietly, and to
accept the mercy Mr Forster had been ready to show her. He was as
watchful as ever, sat next her as she lay on the ground, said at last
that they had not much further to go, and felt her pulse. As the grey
light of morning strengthened, he went slower and slower, and encouraged
her to lean upon him, which her weakness compelled her to do. He sent
forward the factor of the estate they were now entering upon, desiring
him to see that everything was warm and comfortable.
When the building they were approaching came in view, the poor lady
wondered how it could ever be made warm and comfortable. It was a
little old tower, the top of which was in ruins, and the rest as dreary
looking as possible. Cold and bare it stood on a waste hill-side. It
would have looked like a mere grey pillar set down on the scanty
pasture, but for a square patch behind, which was walled in by a hard
ugly wall of stones. A thin grey smoke arose from it, showing that
someone was within; and dogs began to bark as the party drew near.
One woman was here as at the last resting place. She showed the way by
the narrow winding stair, up which Lady Carse was carried like a corpse,
and laid on a little bed in a _very_ small room, whose single window was
boarded up, leaving only a square of glass at the top to admit the
light. Mr Forster stood at the bedside, and said firmly, "Now, Lady
Carse, listen to me for a moment, and then you will be left with such
freedom as this room and this woman's attendance can afford you. You
are so exhausted, that we have changed our plan of travel. You will
remain here, in this room, till you have so recruited yourself by food
and rest as to be able to proceed to a place where all restraint will be
withdrawn. When you think yourself able to proceed, and declare your
willingness to do so, I, or a friend of mine, will be at your service--
at your call at any hour. Till then this room is your abode; and till
then I bid you farewell."
He unfastened the bandage, and was gone before she could speak to him.
What she wanted to say was, that on such terms she would never leave
this room again. She desired the woman to tell him so; but the woman
said she had orders to carry no messages.
Where there is no help and no hope, any force of mere temper is sure to
give way, as Mr Forster well knew. Injured people who have done no
wrong, and who bear no anger against their enemies, have an inward
strength and liberty of mind which enable them to bear on firmly, and to
be immovable in their righteous purposes; so that, as has been shown by
many examples, they will be torn limb from limb sooner than yield. Lady
Carse was an injured person--most deeply injured, but she was not
innocent. She had a purpose; but it was a vindictive one; and her soul
was all tossed with passion, instead of being settled in patience. So
her intentions of starving herself--of making Mr Forster miserable by
killing herself through want of sleep and food, gave way; and then she
was in a rage with herself for having given way. When all was still in
the tower, and the silent woman who attended her knitted on for hours
together, as if she was a machine; and there was nothing to be seen from
the boarded window; and the smouldering peats in the fireplace looked as
if they were asleep, Lady Carse could not always keep awake, and, once
asleep, she did not wake for many hours.
When, at length, she started up and looked around her, she was alone,
and the room was lighted only by a flickering blaze from the fireplace.
This dancing light fell on a little low round table, on which was a
plate with some slices of mutton-ham, some oatcake, three or four eggs,
and a pitcher. She was ravenously hungry, and she was alone. She
thought she would take something--so little as to save her pride, and
not to show that she had yielded. But, once yielding, this was
impossible. She ate, and ate, till all was gone--even the eggs; and it
would have been the same if they had been raw. The pitcher contained
ale, and she emptied it. When she had done, she could have died with
shame. She was just thinking of setting her dress on fire, when she
heard the woman's step on the stair. She threw herself on the bed, and
pretended to be asleep. Presently she was so, and she had another long
nap. When she woke the table had nothing on it but the woman's
knitting; the woman was putting peats on the fire, and she made no
remark, then or afterwards, on the disappearance of the food. From that
day forward food was laid out while the lady slept; and when she awoke,
she found herself alone to eat it. It was served without knife or fork,
with only bone spoons. It would have been intolerable shame to her if
she had known that she was watched, through a little hole in the door,
as a precaution against any attempt on her life.
But her intentions of this kind too gave way. She was well aware that
though not free to go where she liked she could, any day, find herself
in the open air with liberty to converse, except on certain subjects;
and that she might presently be in some abode--she did not know what--
where she could have full personal liberty, and her present confinement
being her own choice made it much less dignified, and this caused her to
waver about throwing off life and captivity together. The moment never
came when she was disposed to try.
At the end of a week she felt great curiosity to know whether Mr
Forster was at the tower all this time waiting her pleasure. She would
not enquire lest she should be suspected of the truth--that she was
beginning to wish to see him. She tried one or two distant questions on
her attendant, but the woman knew nothing. There seemed to be no sort
of question that she could answer.
In a few days more the desire for some conversation with somebody became
very pressing, and Lady Carse was not in the habit of denying herself
anything she wished for. Still, her pride pulled the other way. The
plan she thought of was to sit apparently musing or asleep by the fire
while her attendant swept the floor of her room, and suddenly to run
downstairs while the door was open. This she did one day, when she was
pretty sure she had heard an unusual sound of horses' feet below. If
Mr Forster should be going without her seeing him it would be dreadful.
If he should have arrived after an absence this would afford a pretext
for renewing intercourse with him. So she watched her moment, sprang to
the door, and was down the stair before her attendant could utter a cry
of warning to those below.
Lady Carse stood on the last stair, gazing into the little kitchen,
which occupied the ground floor of the tower. Two or three people
turned and gazed at her, as startled, perhaps, as herself; and she _was_
startled, for one of them was Lord Lovat.
Mr Forster recovered himself, bowed, and said that perhaps she found
herself able to travel; in which case, he was at her service.
"O dear, no!" she said. She had no intention whatever of travelling
further. She had heard an arrival of horsemen, and had merely come down
to know if there was any news from Edinburgh.
Lord Lovat bowed, said he had just arrived from town, and would be happy
to wait on her upstairs with any tidings that she might enquire for.
"By no means," she said, haughtily. She would wait for tidings rather
than learn them from Lord Lovat. She turned, and went upstairs again,
stung by hearing Lord Lovat's hateful laugh behind her as she went.
As she sat by the fire, devouring her shame and wrath, her attendant
came up with a handful of newspapers, and Lord Lovat's compliments, and
he had sent her the latest Edinburgh news to read, as she did not wish
to hear it from him. She snatched the papers, meaning to thrust them
into the fire in token of contempt for the sender; but a longing to read
them came over her, and she might convey sufficient contempt by throwing
them on the bed--and this she accordingly did.
She watched them, however, as a cat does a mouse. The woman seemed to
have no intention of going down any more to-day. Whether the lady was
watched, and her impatience detected, through the hole in the door, or
whether humanity suggested that the unhappy creature should be permitted
an hour of solitude on such an occasion, the woman was called down, and
did not immediately return.
How impatiently, then, were the papers seized! How unsettled was the
eye which ran over the columns, while the mind was too feverish to
comprehend what it read! In a little while, however, the ordinary
method of newspaper reading established itself, and she went on from one
item to another with more amusement than anxiety. In this mood, and
with the utmost suddenness, she came upon the announcement, in large
letters, of "The Funeral of Lady Carse!" It was even so! In one paper
was a paragraph intimating the threatening illness of Lady Carse; in the
next, the announcement of her death; in the third, a full account of her
funeral, as taking place from her husband's house.
Her fate was now clear. She was lost to the world for ever! In the
midst of the agony of this doom she could yet be stung by the thought
that this was the cause of Lord Lovat's complaisance in sending her the
newspapers; that here was the reason of the only indulgence which had
been permitted her!
As for the rest, her mind made short work of it. Her object must now be
to confound her foes--to prove to the world that she was not dead and
buried. From this place she could not do this. Here there was no scope
and no hope. In travelling, and in her future residence, there might be
a thousand opportunities. She could not stay here another hour, and so
she sent word to Mr Forster. His reply was that he should be happy to
escort her that night. From the stair-head she told him that she could
not wait till night. He declared it impossible to make provision for
her comfort along the road without a few hours' notice by a horseman
sent forward. The messenger was already saddling his horse, and by nine
in the evening the rest of the party would follow.
At nine the lady was on her pillion, but now comfortably clad in a
country dress--homely, but warm. It was dark, but she was informed that
the party thoroughly knew their road, and that in four or five days they
should have the benefit of the young moon.
So, after four or five days, they were to be still travelling! Where
could they be carrying her?