THE RETURN
With Otho’s absence and silence, the uneasiness and the fears which
he seemed to bring with him, like so many invisible but potent
attendants, gradually died away and were lulled into serenity. The
great house was closed. The Thorsgarth shooting was let, so Eleanor
heard. She never went near the place, and heard nothing of it all.
Her own life was sweet to her just now, and full of hope. The most
beautiful season of the year floated by like an ideal, a dream of
peace and of calm, yet ample life.
It would be almost impossible to imagine anything more beautiful
than the aspect of Teesdale—especially of that portion of
Teesdale—in the months of September and October—when they are fine
and seasonable that is, and bring such skies, such winds, and such
suns as are due, in these two most gorgeous months of the year.
In this particular season they were all that could be desired, and
our lovers—for lovers they were, though no explicit word of love had
ever passed between them—enjoyed their glory to their heart’s
content. Eleanor was satisfied that Michael did not speak to her;
the spell of the present time was so delicious that she would not
have had it broken. She had forgotten outside troubles and
difficulties; she only felt that all was well, and that a happiness
awaited her in the future, so great that she could well afford to
wait for it.
September sighed itself out in golden glory, leaving a luxury of
ripening tints on every tree, filling the tangled hedges with
many-coloured flames of dying weeds; for, as every one knows who
lives in the country, the smaller plants that grow in the ditches
and near to the ground—the wild geranium, the smaller hemlock, or
that plant which is akin to it, the rose-bushes, the hawthorn, and
wild guelder rose—these are the things that ‘turn’ first, these the
objects on which autumn first places her crimson finger; and then,
when she has embellished the hedges, and is pleased with the result
of her handiwork, she becomes bolder, mounts higher, attacks the
trees—the oak and the beech first, the sycamore and the ash
following in their turn. Then it is that the river gains his
stronger voice, and rushes along, ever more tumultuously. Then it is
that o’ nights the air is keen, and that at that hour which has said
good-bye to afternoon, and is not yet evening, there is a strange,
metallic, lambent light in the sky, a light which seems also almost
to crackle and sparkle in the very atmosphere, a magic, unearthly
light, which has its charms for those who love to study nature in
her more obscure phases.
It was on a glorious, crisp afternoon, a little beyond the middle of
October, that Eleanor returned to the Dower House, after driving
about a bevy of little Johnsons the whole afternoon. She dressed
herself then, and went to dine and spend the evening at the old
doctor’s house. After dinner Michael came in. He seemed lately to
have enjoyed an unusual quantity of leisure in the evening hours.
The talk turned to books; amongst other books to a book of poetry,
some passage in which was disputed. Eleanor said that she had the
book, and would go across to her house and fetch it. Upon this
Michael announced that he should convey her across the square, and
had gone as far as the door of the doctor’s house with her, when his
old friend, who was in his library, called to him, hearing his step.
‘Go to him,’ said Eleanor. ‘I will fetch the book, and return to
you.’ And she walked quickly across the square to her own door.
Arrived there, she found a woman’s figure standing, in an uncertain
attitude, near it. Something—a nameless chill, an unspeakable dread,
took possession of her. She did not speak, but paused, looking at
the figure, her mind disturbed with vague recollections of Otho’s
last visit.
‘Miss Askam!’ said the loiterer, in an uncertain voice.
‘Yes; who is it?’
‘It is I—Ada. I wanted to speak to you.’
‘Come in with me, then,’ she replied, but felt all the time that she
was inviting some great terror and woe to enter her house.
She opened the door, and led Ada into the drawing-room, turned up
the light, and looked at her; and as she looked, the words were
frozen upon her lips at the aspect of the figure before her. Had not
the voice said, ‘It is I—Ada,’ she would scarcely have recognised
this countenance. Ada wore a large, thick, woollen shawl, falling
loosely about her; and a small hat, from under which showed a face
which had aged by twenty years, and which was not only aged, but
seamed, furrowed, worn with lines of what must have been mortal
anguish, seeing that every one of them had been stamped in less than
five short months. The pretty, delicate, meaningless face was clean
gone: in its stead there was a mask, betraying a mind devoured by
misery; eyes which looked at once hard and frightened, hunted and
yet defiant—the eyes of an animal at bay; a countenance to fill the
most indifferent beholder with horror.
Struck literally speechless, Eleanor stood, her hand on the table,
and stared at the figure with wide open eyes, while she felt cold
and terror seize every limb. What did this apparition want with her
or hers? A sickly dread, a kind of dim first suspicion of the
meaning of it all crept into her heart.
‘Miss Askam,’ said this spectre of Ada Dixon, in a low and husky
voice, ‘I’m in trouble.’
‘Yes,’ almost gasped the other.
‘I’m come to you, since it was no use writing to your brother. Where
is he?’
The tongue of Eleanor at first clave to the roof of her mouth; at
last, in a hoarse voice, she asked—
‘What have you to do with my brother?’
With a swift motion, Ada unfastened the pin at her throat; her shawl
slid from her shoulders to the ground, and she confronted Eleanor.
Trembling overpowered the latter. Speech was at first denied her.
She could stand no more, but crouched upon a chair, and gasped out—
‘Oh, horrible, horrible!’
Suddenly a wild gleam of hope crossed her mind. Why was she assuming
the very worst to have happened? By what right did she condemn not
only Otho, but Ada? She sprang up again, went close to the girl, and
almost whispered—
‘Did he not marry you?’
‘Marry me!’ repeated Ada, in a fearful voice of bitterness, scorn,
and despair. ‘Nay, he only swore he would, again and again.’
‘And—and——’ she shivered still. ‘And when was this?’
‘It was in March,’ replied Ada, with stony composure. ‘When I was
staying in Wensleydale, and he was in Friarsdale, and he met me
every day, and said he’d never cared for anybody else. I’ve written
to him—a hundred letters. He has never answered one. I thought he
was at home now; I heard so. I came to tell him he must—to shame
him, if I couldn’t persuade him; and now ... he’s not here. No one
knows ... where he is.’
With an hysterical sob she sank together in the corner of a couch.
‘In March,’ Eleanor was repeating to herself, with mechanical calm,
and clenching her hands, to keep herself still. ‘March—and this is
October. There is yet time.’
That was all she could think of at the moment. There was no time, no
possibility for anything else. Her brain felt wound up to this
emergency, and to nothing more. She walked up to Ada, and touched
her.
‘Your parents—what do they know?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ada, in a dull, colourless monotone. ‘Mother is
away, or I dare not have come home. Father is away for the night.
He’ll be back to-morrow: he will find out ... he will turn me out of
doors. Oh, Miss Askam, save me, save me, save me!’
‘Hush!’ said Eleanor, quietly. ‘Let me think. Some one must have
known—the people you were staying with—your aunt?’
‘She would keep me no longer. I put her off by telling her that he
was coming down there to marry me—that he’d sent me there to wait
for him. I said it all depended on her keeping silence; that was why
she let me stay so long.’
‘At what time will your father be back?’
‘At eleven to-morrow morning, they said.’
‘You will go home now, and stay there all night. At nine o’clock
to-morrow morning come to me. I shall have had time to make
arrangements then. I will see your father. I do not think he will
turn you out of doors. If he does, you shall come here. I will send
for—my brother. I think I can make him come. I do not wish to seem
harsh to you, but you must go home now, that I may have time to
arrange things. You will go to your room at once, when you get home.
You understand—you can say you are tired. Try not to be frightened,’
she added, bending over Ada, who was crouched in an attitude of
blank despair; ‘because I can shelter you, and I will do so, as God
is above us. I promise you this. Now go.’
Slowly Ada rose. Eleanor felt afraid lest she should break down
before she had left the house. But she did not. She submitted to
have her shawl pinned on again, and with the same look of utter,
vacant despair, walked away.
‘Either it will turn her brain or kill her,’ Eleanor felt, as the
girl departed, and she sat down at the table, and rested her head on
her hands, and tried to put away the recollection of the awful
figure she had seen, and to reflect upon what must be done. But she
scarcely had sufficient power yet, over her emotion, to be able to
reflect. She could only remember, and shudder, and feel horrified,
while all kinds of wild speculations darted through her mind, as to
the effect the event would have upon this person, and that person;
and, above all, she wondered how it was that it had never for one
moment occurred to any of them that when Ada was in Wensleydale, and
Otho in Friarsdale, they might easily have met. In fact, she could
think of nothing but of the thing itself, and the crushing, the
overwhelming horror of it, except that every now and then a thought
crossed her mind that something must be done at once, and that there
was no one but herself to do it; which thought reduced her to
complete powerlessness.
While she sat in this chaos of thought and emotion she heard a knock
at the door. She said nothing; she had forgotten all about the
little things that one remembers at ordinary times, and after a
moment, while she still sat, unheeding, it was gently opened, and
Michael Langstroth looked in.
‘I have been sent to fetch you,’ he had begun, and then he came to a
dead stop, as he saw and comprehended her strange attitude; and
when, at his voice, she raised her head and looked at him, he beheld
her face, and knew that since she had quitted them, a quarter of an
hour ago, something terrible had happened to her. And he knew that
moment—he did not in so many words state it to himself, but he knew
it—that it was to him she would appeal for help. He was glad of
that, but he was sorry that he had let the days go by in a dream,
and had not given her the right to come to him, without thought and
without question.
Eleanor, as she looked at him, felt at first a little bewildered. So
overwhelmed was she with what had passed, that it was a moment or
two before she actually realised who he was.
‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,’ says the Psalmist, ‘from
whence cometh my help.’ And, in a certain degree, it was so with
her. A voice supreme and unerring spoke to her; all her nature,
every fibre seemed to bow to an overwhelming intuition which
directed her towards the man who stood before her, looking so
earnestly down upon her. She loved him, and that with a love which
had grown into a great passion, and an absorbing one. But it was
something different—something deeper and higher than even this great
love which impelled her action now;—instinct, some might call it,
and others say that she had naturally a gift for reading character
correctly, and for discerning which persons were, and which were not
to be relied upon. She herself would have said that God inspired
her. She sat motionless for a moment, bending to this inner voice
which spoke to her, acknowledging what her belief told her was the
providential arrival of the one person whom she would most
implicitly trust—and fighting down the unwillingness—natural and
good in itself, but which she felt it was useless to stand upon
now—to speak openly of such things as had happened, to a man who was
neither her husband, her father, nor her brother. And then, her
resolution taken, or rather, that importunate inner voice obeyed,
she got up, and leaning over the table towards him, said—
‘I want to know if you will help me in a very great trouble?’
‘With every power that I have, I will help you,’ he replied,
unhesitatingly, and waited to hear what it was that he had to do.
‘Since I came in I have heard of a thing that has happened. I hardly
know how to tell you of it. It makes me feel as if I had been
laughing and amusing myself in some room, underneath which another
person was being tortured to death.’
Her lips were parched; her eyes dilated.
‘If I did not trust you _entirely_,’ she said, as if she appealed to
him, ‘I could not tell you.’
For a moment she was silent, while Michael waited, and then, turning
to him again, told him, unfalteringly, of the discovery she had
made, and repeated, word for word, the conversation between herself
and Ada. Michael listened in perfect silence; it was, he felt, the
only way in which to hear such a tale.
‘I have sent her home,’ Eleanor said at last, ‘that I might try to
think. She is safe for to-night, since she says her mother is away,
and her father will not return before eleven to-morrow. I have told
her to come here early—at nine to-morrow morning. I thought I would
keep her here till her parents knew. I think her father has a heart,
but I cannot endure that woman, her mother. I feel that she would
rail at her—not because she had done wrong, but because she had
failed in getting married to Otho.’
He nodded.
‘Do you think I have done right?’
‘Perfectly right. There was nothing else to be done. Do you know
where—he—is?’
He spoke as if he found a difficulty in finding a term by which to
speak of Otho.
‘No, I do not; but your—Mr. Langstroth knows all about him. He gave
me his address at Christmas, and I have kept it. It is through him
we shall have to send.... It is now clear to me why Otho would not
give his address to Magdalen.’
‘I see. The thing is, suppose he does not choose to answer the
summons—your brother, I mean. You say she said she had written to
him?’
‘A hundred times, she said, and received no answer.’
‘That looks very much as if he had chosen to desert her entirely,
and did not intend to notice any demand. I fear he will not come if
we send for him.’
‘I do not know that. I think he may. I have an idea in my mind. I
will tell you why I have it, afterwards. Since you told me what his
besetting sin was, I have watched him carefully. He does what he
feels inclined to do, and leaves the results to chance. I have seen
it in a thousand things, great and small. I can tell no reason why
he should have committed this crime—his heart is black—I do not
understand such things. But I believe that when last he saw the
girl, he did not know of this, and that he was tired of the caprice,
and afraid that her letters might tell him of some such thing; so he
has never read them, but trusted to his god, chance, that they did
not tell him what he did not want to hear. I saw him burn a thing
one day, without opening it. Your brother asked him why he did that,
when he knew it was a bill he would have to pay. He said he knew
nothing till he had read it.’
She also told him of the episode she had seen between Otho and the
young woman who had been singing.
‘The expression on his face was fear,’ she went on, as coolly as she
could. ‘I did not understand it then. Now I do. It was dusk. He
could not see the figure properly; he feared to meet Ada; he thought
for a moment that it was Ada, come to accuse him of his sin. All the
time he was here he must have been haunted by the fear that she
might confront him. His questions to us about her, were for a blind;
and I think he wanted to get some news of her, without seeming to
seek it. As we told him nothing, he chose to behave as if there were
nothing to tell. This has all come into my mind since I have seen
Ada. Perhaps I am wrong; but if I am right—and I believe I am, and
we send a message to Mr. Gilbert Langstroth, Otho will know what it
means, and will come.’
‘Could Gilbert have known?’
‘No, no, no!’ she exclaimed, vehemently. ‘I will stake my life on it
that he did not.’
‘I think your theory may be quite right, up to a certain point. You
may be right as to the past, that is, for that would be quite
consistent with his character. But I doubt your sanguine
anticipations being correct. I doubt his coming, if we send for him.
Suppose he is out of England, and refuses to come; because it would
be so much easier for him just to leave her to you, or to herself,
or to her fate.’
‘There is some little time yet. If he does not answer, I will go to
him where he is, and make him come. I will so speak to him that he
shall not dare do anything but come. I will die, but I will force
him to make what miserable reparation lies with him. He is poor
now,’ she added, with a peculiar smile, such as Michael had never
seen upon her face before. ‘Before very long, he will be a pauper. I
know it. He will be dependent upon me. I have understood that for
some little time past. But if he does not come home and marry Ada, I
will let him die of hunger in the street, rather than give him a
penny.’
She did not speak noisily nor vehemently, but Michael saw that she
was quite prepared to carry out her words.
‘Then you have a strong hold upon him,’ he said. ‘Now, what we have
to do, is to telegraph to Gilbert. We can, of course, have an answer
from him to-morrow. By the way, it cannot go before to-morrow. Then
we shall know better what to do. If you will give me pen and paper,
we can perhaps agree together what to say.’
Eleanor brought the writing things, and after various false
attempts, they decided to send:—
‘Send O. A. here instantly, on a matter of life and death. Not an
hour to be lost. If he is not near, send information how he is
soonest to be found.’
‘I will see that it goes first thing in the morning,’ said he. ‘And
you say Ada is coming to you?’
‘Yes; at nine.’
‘That is well. She could not be in a better place. Do not leave your
house yourself. I will see Mr. Dixon. There is no necessity for you
to trouble. Try to make her talk to you about it; do you understand?
It will be better for her than anything. It may save her life and
her reason.’
‘Yes, I will do so. Do you think I should send for her here
to-night?’
‘No, I do not. It would excite the curiosity and suspicion of your
own servants, and the tale would be over the whole village long
before morning. I shall be obliged to tell them over the way,
though,’ he added, ‘because it might be just possible that Gilbert’s
reply might make it necessary for some one to go up to town, to
settle things more expeditiously. I might go up alone; or if you
went, I would go with you—if I may.’
‘If you may!’ she repeated, in a faltering voice, ‘What could _I_
have done without you!’
‘Another time,’ said he, looking straight into her eyes, ‘I will
tell you something. We have other things to think about now. Be as
tranquil as you can, and remember that you could have done nothing
but what you have done.’
He wrung her hand without saying anything more, and left her.
They had searched their hearts to find what was the best to do in
this terrible emergency, and being at one on the point they did it.
The time in which to decide was short, and they did not know the
whole extent of the woe about which they were, as it were,
legislating. Perhaps they tacitly agreed that the nature which had
endured so long could endure till to-morrow morning. They knew not
what were the principal factors in the sum of the events, in the
midst of which they found themselves without a moment’s warning.
Those factors were despair, and the promptings of a heart which had
literally had all life and all reason ground out of it by seven
months of perfect wretchedness.
Eleanor slept little that night, and waited with sickening anxiety
for nine o’clock. It came, but brought not Ada with it. Half-past
nine; yea, ten had struck, and she came not. Thrilling with
uneasiness, Eleanor knew not what to do. She feared by making
inquiries to excite suspicion. Unhappy and uncertain, she waited
till about half-past ten. Michael called, and, without sitting down,
just told her not to make herself more uneasy than was necessary,
but that he had been at Mr. Dixon’s, intending to appoint a meeting
with him on his return. His assistant said he had had a letter from
him, deferring his return till the following day, and that the maid
had told him that Miss Dixon had gone out, and up the town, without
waiting for any breakfast.
Eleanor felt her heart in her mouth.
‘Has she gone out to kill herself?’ she whispered.1
‘I do not think so,’ said Michael. ‘She cannot have wandered very
far. You shall have news as soon as I can send it. There is only one
road out of this end of the town, and I am riding that way. Good
morning.’
So she was left alone, with the conviction that Michael himself was
far more disturbed than he chose to tell her. Fears and terrors
loomed up like giant shadows in the background of her mind, and so
she passed the most terrible day of her life.