again--stopped--and fixed her eyes suddenly on one of the inner corners
of the room.
The same sinister change which had passed over her once already in
Geoffrey’s presence, when they met in the kitchen-garden at Windygates,
now passed over her again. Her closed lips dropped apart. Her eyes
slowly dilated--moved, inch by inch from the corner, following something
along the empty wall, in the direction of the bed--stopped at the head
of the bed, exactly above Geoffrey’s sleeping face--stared, rigid and
glittering, as if they saw a sight of horror close over it. He sighed
faintly in his sleep. The sound, slight as it was, broke the spell that
held her. She slowly lifted her withered hands, and wrung them above her
head; fled back across the passage; and, rushing into her room, sank on
her knees at the bedside.
Now, in the dead of night, a strange thing happened. Now, in the silence
and the darkness, a hideous secret was revealed.
In the sanctuary of her own room--with all the other inmates of the
house sleeping round her--the dumb woman threw off the mysterious and
terrible disguise under which she deliberately isolated herself among
her fellow-creatures in the hours of the day. Hester Dethridge spoke. In
low, thick, smothered accents--in a wild litany of her own--she prayed.
She called upon the mercy of God for deliverance from herself; for
deliverance from the possession of the Devil; for blindness to fall on
her, for death to strike her, so that she might never see that unnamed
Horror more! Sobs shook the whole frame of the stony woman whom nothing
human moved at other times. Tears poured over those clay-cold cheeks.
One by one, the frantic words of her prayer died away on her lips.
Fierce shuddering fits shook her from head to foot. She started up from
her knees in the darkness. Light! light! light! The unnamed Horror was
behind her in his room. The unnamed Horror was looking at her through
his open door. She found the match-box, and lit the candle on her
table--lit the two other candles set for ornament only on the mantle
piece--and looked all round the brightly lighted little room. “Aha!”
she said to herself, wiping the cold sweat of her agony from her face.
“Candles to other people. God’s light to _me._ Nothing to be seen!
nothing to be seen!” Taking one of the candles in her hand, she crossed
the passage, with her head down, turned her back on Geoffrey’s open
door, closed it quickly and softly, stretching out her hand behind her,
and retreated again to her own room. She fastened the door, and took
an ink-bottle and a pen from the mantle-piece. After considering for a
moment, she hung a handkerchief over the keyhole, and laid an old shawl
longwise at the bottom of the door, so as to hide the light in her room
from the observation of any one in the house who might wake and come
that way. This done, she opened the upper part of her dress, and,
slipping her fingers into a secret pocket hidden in the inner side of
her stays, produced from it some neatly folded leaves of thin paper.
Spread out on the table, the leaves revealed themselves--all but the
last--as closely covered with writing, in her own hand.
The first leaf was headed by this inscription: “My Confession. To be put
into my coffin, and to be buried with me when I die.”
She turned the manuscript over, so as to get at the last page. The
greater part of it was left blank. A few lines of writing, at the top,
bore the date of the day of the week and month on which Lady Lundie had
dismissed her from her situation at Windygates. The entry was expressed
in these terms:
“I have seen IT again to-day. The first time for two months past. In
the kitchen-garden. Standing behind the young gentleman whose name is
Delamayn. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. I have resisted.
By prayer. By meditation in solitude. By reading good books. I have left
my place. I have lost sight of the young gentleman for good. Who will
IT stand behind? and point to next? Lord have mercy upon me! Christ have
mercy upon me!”
Under this she now added the following lines, first carefully prefixing
the date:
“I have seen IT again to-night. I notice one awful change. IT has
appeared twice behind the same person. This has never happened before.
This makes the temptation more terrible than ever. To-night, in his
bedroom, between the bed-head and the wall, I have seen IT behind
young Mr. Delamayn again. The head just above his face, and the finger
pointing downward at his throat. Twice behind this one man. And never
twice behind any other living creature till now. If I see IT a third
time behind him--Lord deliver me! Christ deliver me! I daren’t think of
it. He shall leave my cottage to-morrow. I would fain have drawn back
from the bargain, when the stranger took the lodgings for his friend,
and the friend proved to be Mr. Delamayn. I didn’t like it, even then.
After the warning to-night, my mind is made up. He shall go. He may
have his money back, if he likes. He shall go. (Memorandum: Felt the
temptation whispering this time, and the terror tearing at me all the
while, as I have never felt them yet. Resisted, as before, by prayer.
Am now going down stairs to meditate against it in solitude--to fortify
myself against it by good books. Lord be merciful to me a sinner!)”
In those words she closed the entry, and put the manuscript back in the
secret pocket in her stays.
She went down to the little room looking on the garden, which had once
been her brother’s study. There she lit a lamp, and took some books from
a shelf that hung against the wall. The books were the Bible, a volume
of Methodist sermons, and a set of collected Memoirs of Methodist
saints. Ranging these last carefully round her, in an order of her own,
Hester Dethridge sat down with the Bible on her lap to watch out the
night.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-THIRD.
WHAT had happened in the hours of darkness?
This was Anne’s first thought, when the sunlight poured in at her
window, and woke her the next morning.
She made immediate inquiry of the servant. The girl could only speak for
herself. Nothing had occurred to disturb her after she had gone to bed.
Her master was still, she believed, in his room. Mrs. Dethridge was at
her work in the kitchen.
Anne went to the kitchen. Hester Dethridge was at her usual occupation
at that time--preparing the breakfast. The slight signs of animation
which Anne had noticed in her when they last met appeared no more.
The dull look was back again in her stony eyes; the lifeless torpor
possessed all her movements. Asked if any thing had happened in the
night, she slowly shook her stolid head, slowly made the sign with her
hand which signified, “Nothing.”
Leaving the kitchen, Anne saw Julius in the front garden. She went out
and joined him.
“I believe I have to thank your consideration for me for some hours of
rest,” he said. “It was five in the morning when I woke. I hope you
had no reason to regret having left me to sleep? I went into Geoffrey’s
room, and found him stirring. A second dose of the mixture composed
him again. The fever has gone. He looks weaker and paler, but in other
respects like himself. We will return directly to the question of his
health. I have something to say to you, first, about a change which may
be coming in your life here.”
“Has he consented to the separation?”
“No. He is as obstinate about it as ever. I have placed the matter
before him in every possible light. He still refuses, positively
refuses, a provision which would make him an independent man for life.”
“Is it the provision he might have had, Lord Holchester, if--?”
“If he had married Mrs. Glenarm? No. It is impossible, consistently with
my duty to my mother, and with what I owe to the position in which my
father’s death has placed me, that I can offer him such a fortune as
Mrs. Glenarm’s. Still, it is a handsome income which he is mad enough
to refuse. I shall persist in pressing it on him. He must and shall take
it.”
Anne felt no reviving hope roused in her by his last words. She turned
to another subject.
“You had something to tell me,” she said. “You spoke of a change.”
“True. The landlady here is a very strange person; and she has done
a very strange thing. She has given Geoffrey notice to quit these
lodgings.”
“Notice to quit?” Anne repeated, in amazement.
“Yes. In a formal letter. She handed it to me open, as soon as I was
up this morning. It was impossible to get any explanation from her. The
poor dumb creature simply wrote on her slate: ‘He may have his money
back, if he likes: he shall go!’ Greatly to my surprise (for the woman
inspires him with the strongest aversion) Geoffrey refuses to go until
his term is up. I have made the peace between them for to-day. Mrs.
Dethridge very reluctantly, consents to give him four-and-twenty hours.
And there the matter rests at present.”
“What can her motive be?” said Anne.
“It’s useless to inquire. Her mind is evidently off its balance. One
thing is clear, Geoffrey shall not keep you here much longer. The
coming change will remove you from this dismal place--which is one thing
gained. And it is quite possible that new scenes and new surroundings
may have their influence on Geoffrey for good. His conduct--otherwise
quite incomprehensible--may be the result of some latent nervous
irritation which medical help might reach. I don’t attempt to disguise
from myself or from you, that your position here is a most deplorable
one. But before we despair of the future, let us at least inquire
whether there is any explanation of my brother’s present behavior to
be found in the present state of my brother’s health. I have been
considering what the doctor said to me last night. The first thing to do
is to get the best medical advice on Geoffrey’s case which is to be had.
What do you think?”
“I daren’t tell you what I think, Lord Holchester. I will try--it is
a very small return to make for your kindness--I will try to see my
position with your eyes, not with mine. The best medical advice that you
can obtain is the advice of Mr. Speedwell. It was he who first made the
discovery that your brother was in broken health.”
“The very man for our purpose! I will send him here to-day or to-morrow.
Is there any thing else I can do for you? I shall see Sir Patrick as
soon as I get to town. Have you any message for him?”
Anne hesitated. Looking attentively at her, Julius noticed that she
changed color when he mentioned Sir Patrick’s name.
“Will you say that I gratefully thank him for the letter which Lady
Holchester was so good us to give me last night,” she replied. “And will
you entreat him, from me, not to expose himself, on my account,
to--” she hesitated, and finished the sentence with her eyes on the
ground--“to what might happen, if he came here and insisted on seeing
me.”
“Does he propose to do that?”
She hesitated again. The little nervous contraction of her lips at one
side of the mouth became more marked than usual. “He writes that his
anxiety is unendurable, and that he is resolved to see me,” she answered
softly.
“He is likely to hold to his resolution, I think,” said Julius. “When I
saw him yesterday, Sir Patrick spoke of you in terms of admiration--”
He stopped. The bright tears were glittering on Anne’s eyelashes; one
of her hands was toying nervously with something hidden (possibly Sir
Patrick’s letter) in the bosom of her dress. “I thank him with my whole
heart,” she said, in low, faltering tones. “But it is best that he
should not come here.”
“Would you like to write to him?”
“I think I should prefer your giving him my message.”
Julius understood that the subject was to proceed no further. Sir
Patrick’s letter had produced some impression on her, which the
sensitive nature of the woman seemed to shrink from acknowledging, even
to herself. They turned back to enter the cottage. At the door they were
met by a surprise. Hester Dethridge, with her bonnet on--dressed, at
that hour of the morning, to go out!
“Are you going to market already?” Anne asked.
Hester shook her head.
“When are you coming back?”
Hester wrote on her slate: “Not till the night-time.”
Without another word of explanation she pulled her veil down over her
face, and made for the gate. The key had been left in the dining-room by
Julius, after he had let the doctor out. Hester had it in her hand. She
opened he gate and closed the door after her, leaving the key in the
lock. At the moment when the door banged to Geoffrey appeared in the
passage.
“Where’s the key?” he asked. “Who’s gone out?”
His brother answered the question. He looked backward and forward
suspiciously between Julius and Anne. “What does she go out for at his
time?” he said. “Has she left the house to avoid Me?”
Julius thought this the likely explanation. Geoffrey went down sulkily
to the gate to lock it, and returned to them, with the key in his
pocket.
“I’m obliged to be careful of the gate,” he said. “The neighborhood
swarms with beggars and tramps. If you want to go out,” he added,
turning pointedly to Anne, “I’m at your service, as a good husband ought
to be.”
After a hurried breakfast Julius took his departure. “I don’t accept
your refusal,” he said to his brother, before Anne. “You will see me
here again.” Geoffrey obstinately repeated the refusal. “If you come
here every day of your life,” he said, “it will be just the same.”
The gate closed on Julius. Anne returned again to the solitude of her
own chamber. Geoffrey entered the drawing-room, placed the volumes of
the Newgate Calendar on the table before him, and resumed the reading
which he had been unable to continue on the evening before.
Hour after hour he doggedly plodded through one case of murder after
another. He had read one good half of the horrid chronicle of crime
before his power of fixing his attention began to fail him. Then he
lit his pipe, and went out to think over it in the garden. However the
atrocities of which he had been reading might differ in other
respects, there was one terrible point of resemblance, which he had
not anticipated, and in which every one of the cases agreed. Sooner
or later, there was the dead body always certain to be found; always
bearing its dumb witness, in the traces of poison or in the marks of
violence, to the crime committed on it.
He walked to and fro slowly, still pondering over the problem which
had first found its way into his mind when he had stopped in the front
garden and had looked up at Anne’s window in the dark. “How?” That had
been the one question before him, from the time when the lawyer had
annihilated his hopes of a divorce. It remained the one question still.
There was no answer to it in his own brain; there was no answer to it in
the book which he had been consulting. Every thing was in his favor if
he could only find out “how.” He had got his hated wife up stairs at his
mercy--thanks to his refusal of the money which Julius had offered
to him. He was living in a place absolutely secluded from public
observation on all sides of it--thanks to his resolution to remain at
the cottage, even after his landlady had insulted him by sending him
a notice to quit. Every thing had been prepared, every thing had been
sacrificed, to the fulfillment of one purpose--and how to attain that
purpose was still the same impenetrable mystery to him which it had been
from the first!
What was the other alternative? To accept the proposal which Julius had
made. In other words, to give up his vengeance on Anne, and to turn his
back on the splendid future which Mrs. Glenarm’s devotion still offered
to him.
Never! He would go back to the books. He was not at the end of them. The
slightest hint in the pages which were still to be read might set his
sluggish brain working in the right direction. The way to be rid of her,
without exciting the suspicion of any living creature, in the house or
out of it, was a way that might be found yet.
Could a man, in his position of life, reason in this brutal manner?
could he act in this merciless way? Surely the thought of what he was
about to do must have troubled him this time!
Pause for a moment--and look back at him in the past.
Did he feel any remorse when he was plotting the betrayal of Arnold in
the garden at Windygates? The sense which feels remorse had not been put
into him. What he is now is the legitimate consequence of what he was
then. A far more serious temptation is now urging him to commit a far
more serious crime. How is he to resist? Will his skill in rowing
(as Sir Patrick once put it), his swiftness in running, his admirable
capacity and endurance in other physical exercises, help him to win a
purely moral victory over his own selfishness and his own cruelty? No!
The moral and mental neglect of himself, which the material tone of
public feeling about him has tacitly encouraged, has left him at the
mercy of the worst instincts in his nature--of all that is most vile
and of all that is most dangerous in the composition of the natural
man. With the mass of his fellows, no harm out of the common has come of
this, because no temptation out of the common has passed their way. But
with _him,_ the case is reversed. A temptation out of the common has
passed _his_ way. How does it find him prepared to meet it? It finds
him, literally and exactly, what his training has left him, in the
presence of any temptation small or great--a defenseless man.
Geoffrey returned to the cottage. The servant stopped him in the
passage, to ask at what time he wished to dine. Instead of answering, he
inquired angrily for Mrs. Dethridge. Mrs. Dethridge not come back.
It was now late in the afternoon, and she had been out since the early
morning. This had never happened before. Vague suspicions of her, one
more monstrous than another, began to rise in Geoffrey’s mind. Between
the drink and the fever, he had been (as Julius had told him) wandering
in his mind during a part of the night. Had he let any thing out in that
condition? Had Hester heard it? And was it, by any chance, at the bottom
of her long absence and her notice to quit? He determined--without
letting her see that he suspected her--to clear up that doubt as soon as
his landlady returned to the house.
The evening came. It was past nine o’clock before there was a ring at
the bell. The servant came to ask for the key. Geoffrey rose to go to
the gate himself--and changed his mind before he left the room. _Her_
suspicions might be roused (supposing it to be Hester who was waiting
for admission) if he opened the gate to her when the servant was there
to do it. He gave the girl the key, and kept out of sight.
* * * * *
“Dead tired!”--the servant said to herself, seeing her mistress by the
light of the lamp over the gate.
“Dead tired!”--Geoffrey said to himself, observing Hester suspiciously
as she passed him in the passage on her way up stairs to take off her
bonnet in her own room.
“Dead tired!”--Anne said to herself, meeting Hester on the upper floor,
and receiving from her a letter in Blanche’s handwriting, delivered to
the mistress of the cottage by the postman, who had met her at her own
gate.
Having given the letter to Anne, Hester Dethridge withdrew to her
bedroom.
Geoffrey closed the door of the drawing-room, in which the candles were
burning, and went into the dining-room, in which there was no light.
Leaving the door ajar, he waited to intercept his landlady on her way
back to her supper in the kitchen.
Hester wearily secured her door, wearily lit the candles, wearily
put the pen and ink on the table. For some minutes after this she was
compelled to sit down, and rally her strength and fetch her breath.
After a little she was able to remove her upper clothing. This done she
took the manuscript inscribed, “My Confession,” out of the secret pocket
of her stays--turned to the last leaf as before--and wrote another
entry, under the entry made on the previous night.
“This morning I gave him notice to quit, and offered him his money back
if he wanted it. He refuses to go. He shall go to-morrow, or I will
burn the place over his head. All through to-day I have avoided him by
keeping out of the house. No rest to ease my mind, and no sleep to close
my eyes. I humbly bear my cross as long as my strength will let me.”
At those words the pen dropped from her fingers. Her head nodded on
her breast. She roused herself with a start. Sleep was the enemy she
dreaded: sleep brought dreams.
She unfastened the window-shutters and looked out at the night. The
peaceful moonlight was shining over the garden. The clear depths of the
night sky were soothing and beautiful to look at. What! Fading already?
clouds? darkness? No! Nearly asleep once more. She roused herself again,
with a start. There was the moonlight, and there was the garden as
bright under it as ever.
Dreams or no dreams, it was useless to fight longer against the
weariness that overpowered her. She closed the shutters, and went back
to the bed; and put her Confession in its customary place at night,
under her pillow.
She looked round the room--and shuddered. Every corner of it was filled
with the terrible memories of the past night. She might wake from the
torture of the dreams to find the terror of the Apparition watching at
her bedside. Was there no remedy? no blessed safeguard under which she
might tranquilly resign herself to sleep? A thought crossed her mind.
The good book--the Bible. If she slept with the Bible under her pillow,
there was hope in the good book--the hope of sleeping in peace.
It was not worth while to put on the gown and the stays which she had
taken off. Her shawl would cover her. It was equally needless to take
the candle. The lower shutters would not be closed at that hour; and
if they were, she could lay her hand on the Bible, in its place on the
parlor book-shelf, in the dark.
She removed the Confession from under the pillow. Not even for a minute
could she prevail on herself to leave it in one room while she was away
from it in another. With the manuscript folded up, and hidden in her
hand, she slowly descended the stairs again. Her knees trembled under
her. She was obliged to hold by the banister, with the hand that was
free.
Geoffrey observed her from the dining-room, on her way down the stairs.
He waited to see what she did, before he showed himself, and spoke
to her. Instead of going on into the kitchen, she stopped short, and
entered the parlor. Another suspicious circumstance! What did she want
in the parlor, without a candle, at that time of night?
She went to the book-case--her dark figure plainly visible in the
moonlight that flooded the little room. She staggered and put her
hand to her head; giddy, to all appearance, from extreme fatigue. She
recovered herself, and took a book from the shelf. She leaned against
the wall after she had possessed herself of the book. Too weary, as it
seemed, to get up stairs again without a little rest. Her arm-chair was
near her. Better rest, for a moment or two, to be had in that than could
be got by leaning against the wall. She sat down heavily in the chair,
with the book on her lap. One of her arms hung over the arm of the
chair, with the hand closed, apparently holding something.
Her head nodded on her breast--recovered itself--and sank gently on the
cushion at the back of the chair. Asleep? Fast asleep.
In less than a minute the muscles of the closed hand that hung over
the arm of the chair slowly relaxed. Something white slipped out of her
hand, and lay in the moonlight on the floor.
Geoffrey took off his heavy shoes, and entered the room noiselessly in
his stockings. He picked up the white thing on the floor. It proved to
be a collection of several sheets of thin paper, neatly folded together,
and closely covered with writing.
Writing? As long as she was awake she had kept it hidden in her hand.
Why hide it?
Had he let out any thing to compromise himself when he was light-headed
with the fever the night before? and had she taken it down in writing to
produce against him? Possessed by guilty distrust, even that monstrous
doubt assumed a look of probability to Geoffrey’s mind. He left
the parlor as noiselessly as he had entered it, and made for the
candle-light in the drawing-room, determined to examine the manuscript
in his hand.
After carefully smoothing out the folded leaves on the table, he turned
to the first page, and read these lines.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FOURTH.
THE MANUSCRIPT.
1.