ADA
Ada had gone home, after leaving the Dower House. The maid had told
Michael that Miss Dixon had gone out about eight o’clock, in her
bonnet and shawl, without any breakfast, and that she had had
nothing to eat after her arrival at home. She had never, indeed,
taken her things off; but was in exactly the same dress she had worn
on her journey to Bradstane, which had been a long and fatiguing
one. On going home from her interview with Eleanor, she went
upstairs, partly in mechanical obedience to a remembered mandate of
Miss Askam’s, partly automatically.
She never undressed, or even lay down on her bed. Part of the cruel
night she spent in sitting on a chair by the wall, staring with
blank eyes into the darkness, and repressing, half mechanically, the
moans that rose to her lips. Another portion of her vigil was
consumed in a restless wandering to and fro. Her chamber was over
the empty parlour. No one would hear or heed her footsteps. At last,
finding the darkness unbearable, she struck a match, and lighted two
candles which stood on the dressing-table, and gazed about the room.
It was her own bedroom that she was in, and the bed, beside which
she sat, was the bed in which Ada Dixon had slept—the same Ada Dixon
who had felt indignant and insulted when her plain-spoken lover had
told her that no honest girl required notice from her superiors. How
very angry she had been when he said it. At this recollection she
held her hands before her mouth to stifle a shriek. In this room,
before that looking-glass, how many hours had she spent, trying the
effect of this, that, or the other piece of finery; endeavouring to
model her bonnets, her hats, her mantles, and her gowns upon those
of her patroness, Magdalen Wynter? In that desk, standing upon the
little round table in the corner, how many notes might be reposing,
indited by Otho Askam? Notes slipped into her hand under Magdalen’s
very eyes, when he had met her at Balder Hall; behind her
unsuspecting father’s back, when she happened to be in the shop.
Notes containing at first nothing but a rather heavy style of
compliment, adapted to a taste not over-fastidious in such matters;
tragic effusions, when read by the light of this present;
ponderously comic, if viewed critically on their intrinsic merits as
compositions.
When had it first seriously occurred to her that she might become
Mrs. Askam, of Thorsgarth? Why, on that night, a hundred years ago,
when there had been a grand concert, at which she had sung—when Miss
Wynter had been flouted, and Ada flattered and complimented.
That was the night Roger had come in in such a fury, and carried
her away. Roger—Roger—her thoughts wandered—who was Roger, and
what had he to do with her? They were engaged to be married
once—now—yet——Yes, and in November he was to come and see her.
Again a scream of wild laughter rose to her lips. Again she managed
to stifle it, and again her mind reverted, whether she would or no,
to her horror, her nightmare, the history of the last seven months.
She recollected how Otho had appeared one day at the farmhouse where
she was staying, and had paid her compliments; how she, grown bolder
now that Magdalen was not present to overawe her, had, in a perkish
manner, chaffed him about his engagement; to which he had retorted
that he was not married yet, and that engagements might be broken
off; and had appealed to her admiring cousins to know if Miss Dixon
would not grace any sphere, even the most exalted. She remembered
the gradually arising passion in his looks and his words, and how
she herself, by one of those mysterious attractions which we see
daily exemplified, had found herself spellbound by him in a manner
which Roger could never have compassed if he had died for it.
Temptation, kisses, promises—such profuse promises, appealing with
instinctive acuteness to her vanity, her love of distinction—the
strange eyes which magnetised and fascinated her; a brief, delirious
dream—and since then, hell, by day and by night; not from the sense
of defilement which would kill some natures—but, let the truth be
written of her; she has her compeers in many places—from the
scorching conviction that if, or when, she was found out, disgrace
and contumely would be her portion.
She recalled the parting from Roger—when she had dismissed him in
the pride of her heart, at a time when hope was still strong; and
though she was beginning to have sickening qualms, yet she had been
deluded enough to mistake his footstep behind her for Otho’s, and
had had a wild idea that he had at last broken with Magdalen, and
was coming to save and to claim her. Then her departure; the letters
she had written, which had never been noticed; her aunt’s gradually
awakened suspicions, and the tales she had told to stave off ruin
and discovery; her journey home in fluttering hope, and desperate
resolve; for a letter from home in which her father had expressed
himself obscurely, had made her think Otho was at Thorsgarth. How
she had made inquiries, and learnt that he had been gone a month or
more. Then Eleanor, and her promises, and how she was to go and see
her in the morning.
The night hours passed swiftly in this consuming vigil, and
presently Ada saw that it was broad day, time, therefore, to go and
see Miss Askam. That was her one thought now, that she was to go and
see Miss Askam. And yet, her mind being more than a little
wandering, she did not realise that though daylight, it was not yet
the appointed time; but went downstairs, and let herself out of the
house. The maid was at work in the kitchen; but she was a new-comer
since Ada had left home, and did not therefore address her, or ask
her any questions.
When Ada was out in the street she felt very weak and very strange,
but she looked at a clock which stood over a public building, nearly
opposite her father’s house. The hands pointed to eight; and then
she remembered vaguely that Miss Askam had said nine; she must not
go before nine.
She would take a little walk then, in the early freshness; she could
not go back to that dreadful room. Besides, she had advanced a
little up the town, into the square: there were Miss Askam’s blinds
still down; it would not do to go there yet, though she longed to do
so, and, had she been in her right mind, would have knocked without
further ado, confident in the generous charity of the other woman.
So she wandered on, out of the town, faint and feeble for want of
food and rest; crazy, and growing every moment more so, with woe,
and fear, and wretchedness. Soon she was on a lonely road,
stretching out to the north-east, with few houses, and, at that
hour, scarcely a person on it. How beautiful it all was, in this
golden morning sunshine, with the mists rising from the river, and
the trees, clad in yellow and scarlet and russet, heavy and drooping
in the windless air of a frosty October morning, precursor of a
glorious autumn day!
Then she emerged from the shade of these trees, and found herself
upon a wild upland road, with sweeps of country stretching far and
wide around her; fields of yellow stubble, pastures, meadows;
stretches of heavy wood; here and there the gleam of the river, and
on every side, the wall of blue fells in the distance. The rough,
uphill road lay before her, with scarce a house to be seen; and
overhead a blue sky, from which fleecy white clouds were everywhere
rolling back to show the fathomless, serene expanse.
‘Ay, but I’m so tired, so tired!’ Ada sighed, as she stumbled, and
then recovered herself. ‘This is not being a lady; why does he not
come home? If I had the carriage he promised me,—he said he would
drive to Balder Hall with me, to see Miss Wynter, and show her what
he thought of me, when we were married.’
Here she found herself opposite to a tiny house at the roadside, or
rather, at a corner where four roads met; and at its door a woman
stood, saw her, called out to her, and wished her good day.
‘Good day!’ said Ada, with a sudden affectation of her old mincing
manner. ‘Might I beg a drink of water from you?’
The woman, who was kindly, though rough, would have had her come in
and have some bread and milk, but she would not. She had quite
forgotten Eleanor Askam by this time, and said she had far to go,
and must not wait. The water was bestowed upon her, and she stood to
drink it, holding the cup with her right hand, while her left rested
upon the table. The woman looked at her, and drew her own
conclusions from what she saw. Ada thanked her, with an affectation
of superiority and patronage, and left the cottage. Its mistress
stood watching her, as she turned to the right, along a high,
toilsome road, and marched slowly and heavily along it.
‘Some poor crazy creature, whose hour is not far off. God pity her!’
she said within herself, and for a moment felt inclined to run after
the girl, and insist on sheltering her. But the thought of her
‘man,’ and the trouble he would feel it to have such a person in the
house deterred her. She went inside again, to her morning’s work.
Ada crept on, till she saw at a little distance, gray farm-buildings
and a whitewashed house, with a long, low front; and it came across
her mind that she could not walk any farther, but that she would go
there, and ask them to let her rest till her carriage came, which
was to meet her there, and take her home to lunch. And if they asked
her who she was—why, the answer was simple—Mrs. Askam, of
Thorsgarth. And in fancy, she saw curtseys dropped, and heard them
begging her to be seated. For she was now quite crazy, only in this
way; the connecting string in all her wild thoughts, was the vague
recollection of real promises.
Before she arrived at the farm, she swerved to one side; her knees
gave way, and in a little hollow in the wall, where there was a heap
of stones, she sank down, feeling as if she were going to sleep; but
the sleep became a long, deadly faint, and Ada Dixon, the petted
beauty of the old town where she had been born and bred, who had
been the plighted wife of a good man, lay in a heap by the roadside,
with only the broad sky above her, with nothing but her mother earth
on which to rest her dainty limbs.
And here she continued to lie, till Michael Langstroth rode up,
having made inquiries on his way, and learnt from the woman at the
cross-roads, that such a young woman as he described had passed.
‘Ay, doctor,’ said the woman, who knew him, though not Ada. ‘She was
none fit to be walking on such roads at such times. I wanted her to
bide a bit, and rest; but nay—she said she had far to go, and yon’s
t’ road she took.’
Michael rode on, determined to find her, for Roger’s sake, for the
sake of Eleanor, and out of his own pity for her condition. He was
not long in coming within sight of the gray stone farm, and within a
stone’s throw of it, the curve in the wall, and the figure that lay
beneath it.
He muttered an inarticulate word, as he sprang from his horse, and
stooped over her, and when he saw her face, recoiled for a moment.
For a brief instant or two he could see nothing distinctly, a film
was over his eyes, and a great sob in his throat, as he turned, and
hung his horse’s bridle over the post of a gate in the wall He then
stooped down, raised the lifeless figure in his arms, and carried
her over the rough road to the farm door. The dogs, who were his
friends, came out to welcome him, and then stopped, sniffing
suspiciously at the skirts of the strange burden he bore. The
farmer’s wife saw him, and ran forward, with upraised hands, ‘Lord
’a mercy, Dr. Langstroth—what is’t?’
‘Mrs. Nadin, you have promised many a time to do me a good turn; and
I want a very good one doing now. Give a shelter to this poor thing
till her trouble is over; it is a sad tale, and I’ll tell it you
afterwards.’
Mrs. Nadin made no more ado. Langstroth had, according to her, saved
her husband’s life two years ago, and with true north country love,
she had been ever since burning to ‘pay him back again.’ She only
stopped to look at the girl’s face, and to ejaculate Ada’s name.
Then she called her daughter to her aid, and they whispered
horror-struck conjectures to one another as they tended the wretched
young woman.
And here, under the roof of these pitiful strangers, was that
evening born, before his time, the son of Otho Askam—a child of
sorrow, if ever one came into the world.