beautiful little boy, playing with a brand-new toy--a horse and wagon.
While I was watching him busily plucking up the blades of grass and
loading his wagon with them, I felt for the first time--what I have
often and often felt since--a creeping chill come slowly over my flesh,
and then a suspicion of something hidden near me, which would steal out
and show itself if I looked that way.
“There was a big tree hard by. I looked toward the tree, and waited to
see the something hidden appear from behind it.
“The Thing stole out, dark and shadowy in the pleasant sunlight. At
first I saw only the dim figure of a woman. After a little it began to
get plainer, brightening from within outward--brightening, brightening,
brightening, till it set before me the vision of MY OWN SELF, repeated
as if I was standing before a glass--the double of myself, looking at me
with my own eyes. I saw it move over the grass. I saw it stop behind
the beautiful little boy. I saw it stand and listen, as I had stood and
listened at the dawn of morning, for the chiming of the bell before the
clock struck the hour. When it heard the stroke it pointed down to the
boy with my own hand; and it said to me, with my own voice, ‘Kill him.’
“A time passed. I don’t know whether it was a minute or an hour. The
heavens and the earth disappeared from before me. I saw nothing but the
double of myself, with the pointing hand. I felt nothing but the longing
to kill the boy.
“Then, as it seemed, the heavens and the earth rushed back upon me. I
saw the people near staring in surprise at me, and wondering if I was in
my right mind.
“I got, by main force, to my feet; I looked, by main force, away from
the beautiful boy; I escaped, by main force, from the sight of the
Thing, back into the streets. I can only describe the overpowering
strength of the temptation that tried me in one way. It was like tearing
the life out of me to tear myself from killing the boy. And what it was
on this occasion it has been ever since. No remedy against it but in
that torturing effort, and no quenching the after-agony but by solitude
and prayer.
“The sense of a coming punishment had hung over me. And the punishment
had come. I had waited for the judgment of an Avenging Providence.
And the judgment was pronounced. With pious David I could now say, Thy
fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have cut me off.”
*****
Arrived at that point in the narrative, Geoffrey looked up from the
manuscript for the first time. Some sound outside the room had disturbed
him. Was it a sound in the passage?
He listened. There was an interval of silence. He looked back again at
the Confession, turning over the last leaves to count how much was left
of it before it came to an end.
After relating the circumstances under which the writer had returned to
domestic service, the narrative was resumed no more. Its few remaining
pages were occupied by a fragmentary journal. The brief entries referred
to the various occasions on which Hester Dethridge had again and
again seen the terrible apparition of herself, and had again and again
resisted the homicidal frenzy roused in her by the hideous creation of
her own distempered brain. In the effort which that resistance cost her
lay the secret of her obstinate determination to insist on being freed
from her work at certain times, and to make it a condition with any
mistress who employed her that she should be privileged to sleep in a
room of her own at night. Having counted the pages thus filled,
Geoffrey turned back to the place at which he had left off, to read the
manuscript through to the end.
As his eyes rested on the first line the noise in the
passage--intermitted for a moment only--disturbed him again.
This time there was no doubt of what the sound implied. He heard her
hurried footsteps; he heard her dreadful cry. Hester Dethridge had woke
in her chair in the pallor, and had discovered that the Confession was
no longer in her own hands.
He put the manuscript into the breast-pocket of his coat. On _this_
occasion his reading had been of some use to him. Needless to go on
further with it. Needless to return to the Newgate Calendar. The problem
was solved.
As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a terrible
smile. While the woman’s Confession was in his pocket the woman herself
was in his power. “If she wants it back,” he said, “she must get it
on my terms.” With that resolution, he opened the door, and met Hester
Dethridge, face to face, in the passage.
CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIFTH.
THE SIGNS OF THE END.
THE servant, appearing the next morning in Anne’s room with the
breakfast tray, closed the door with an air of mystery, and announced
that strange things were going on in the house.
“Did you hear nothing last night, ma’am,” she asked, “down stairs in the
passage?”
“I thought I heard some voices whispering outside my room,” Anne
replied. “Has any thing happened?”
Extricated from the confusion in which she involved it, the girl’s
narrative amounted in substance to this. She had been startled by the
sudden appearance of her mistress in the passage, staring about her
wildly, like a woman who had gone out of her senses. Almost at the same
moment “the master” had flung open the drawing-room door. He had caught
Mrs. Dethridge by the arm, had dragged her into the room, and had closed
the door again. After the two had remained shut up together for more
than half an hour, Mrs. Dethridge had come out, as pale as ashes, and
had gone up stairs trembling like a person in great terror. Some time
later, when the servant was in bed, but not asleep, she had seen a light
under her door, in the narrow wooden passage which separated Anne’s
bedroom from Hester’s bedroom, and by which she obtained access to her
own little sleeping-chamber beyond. She had got out of bed; had looked
through the keyhole; and had seen “the master” and Mrs. Dethridge
standing together examining the walls of the passage. “The master” had
laid his hand upon the wall, on the side of his wife’s room, and had
looked at Mrs. Dethridge. And Mrs. Dethridge had looked back at him, and
had shaken her head. Upon that he had said in a whisper (still with his
hand on the wooden wall), “Not to be done here?” And Mrs. Dethridge had
shaken her head. He had considered a moment, and had whispered again,
“The other room will do! won’t it?” And Mrs. Dethridge had nodded her
head--and so they had parted. That was the story of the night. Early in
the morning, more strange things had happened. The master had gone out,
with a large sealed packet in his hand, covered with many stamps; taking
his own letter to the post, instead of sending the servant with it as
usual. On his return, Mrs. Dethridge had gone out next, and had
come back with something in a jar which she had locked up in her own
sitting-room. Shortly afterward, a working-man had brought a bundle of
laths, and some mortar and plaster of Paris, which had been carefully
placed together in a corner of the scullery. Last, and most remarkable
in the series of domestic events, the girl had received permission to go
home and see her friends in the country, on that very day; having been
previously informed, when she entered Mrs. Dethridge’s service, that
she was not to expect to have a holiday granted to her until after
Christmas. Such were the strange things which had happened in the house
since the previous night. What was the interpretation to be placed on
them?
The right interpretation was not easy to discover.
Some of the events pointed apparently toward coming repairs or
alterations in the cottage. But what Geoffrey could have to do with
them (being at the time served with a notice to quit), and why Hester
Dethridge should have shown the violent agitation which had been
described, were mysteries which it was impossible to penetrate.
Anne dismissed the girl with a little present and a few kind words.
Under other circumstances, the incomprehensible proceedings in the house
might have made her seriously uneasy. But her mind was now occupied by
more pressing anxieties. Blanche’s second letter (received from Hester
Dethridge on the previous evening) informed her that Sir Patrick
persisted in his resolution, and that he and his niece might be
expected, come what might of it, to present themselves at the cottage on
that day.
Anne opened the letter, and looked at it for the second time. The
passages relating to Sir Patrick were expressed in these terms:
“I don’t think, darling, you have any idea of the interest that you have
roused in my uncle. Although he has not to reproach himself, as I have,
with being the miserable cause of the sacrifice that you have made, he
is quite as wretched and quite as anxious about you as I am. We talk of
nobody else. He said last night that he did not believe there was your
equal in the world. Think of that from a man who has such terribly
sharp eyes for the faults of women in general, and such a terribly sharp
tongue in talking of them! I am pledged to secrecy; but I must tell you
one other thing, between ourselves. Lord Holchester’s announcement
that his brother refuses to consent to a separation put my uncle almost
beside himself. If there is not some change for the better in your life
in a few days’ time, Sir Patrick will find out a way of his own--lawful
or not, he doesn’t care--for rescuing you from the dreadful position in
which you are placed, and Arnold (with my full approval) will help him.
As we understand it, you are, under one pretense or another, kept a
close prisoner. Sir Patrick has already secured a post of observation
near you. He and Arnold went all round the cottage last night, and
examined a door in your back garden wall, with a locksmith to help them.
You will no doubt hear further about this from Sir Patrick himself. Pray
don’t appear to know any thing of it when you see him! I am not in his
confidence--but Arnold is, which comes to the same thing exactly. You
will see us (I mean you will see my uncle and me) to-morrow, in spite
of the brute who keeps you under lock and key. Arnold will not accompany
us; he is not to be trusted (he owns it himself) to control his
indignation. Courage, dearest! There are two people in the world to whom
you are inestimably precious, and who are determined not to let your
happiness be sacrificed. I am one of them, and (for Heaven’s sake keep
this a secret also!) Sir Patrick is the other.”
Absorbed in the letter, and in the conflict of opposite feelings which
it roused--her color rising when it turned her thoughts inward on
herself, and fading again when she was reminded by it of the coming
visit--Anne was called back to a sense of present events by the
reappearance of the servant, charged with a message. Mr. Speedwell had
been for some time in the cottage, and he was now waiting to see her
down stairs.
Anne found the surgeon alone in the drawing-room. He apologized for
disturbing her at that early hour.
“It was impossible for me to get to Fulham yesterday,” he said, “and
I could only make sure of complying with Lord Holchester’s request by
coming here before the time at which I receive patients at home. I have
seen Mr. Delamayn, and I have requested permission to say a word to you
on the subject of his health.”
Anne looked through the window, and saw Geoffrey smoking his pipe--not
in the back garden, as usual, but in front of the cottage, where he
could keep his eye on the gate.
“Is he ill?” she asked.
“He is seriously ill,” answered Mr. Speedwell. “I should not otherwise
have troubled you with this interview. It is a matter of professional
duty to warn you, as his wife, that he is in danger. He may be seized at
any moment by a paralytic stroke. The only chance for him--a very poor
one, I am bound to say--is to make him alter his present mode of life
without loss of time.”
“In one way he will be obliged to alter it,” said Anne. “He has received
notice from the landlady to quit this cottage.”
Mr. Speedwell looked surprised.
“I think you will find that the notice has been withdrawn,” he said.
“I can only assure you that Mr. Delamayn distinctly informed me, when I
advised change of air, that he had decided, for reasons of his own, on
remaining here.”
(Another in the series of incomprehensible domestic events! Hester
Dethridge--on all other occasions the most immovable of women--had
changed her mind!)
“Setting that aside,” proceeded the surgeon, “there are two preventive
measures which I feel bound to suggest. Mr. Delamayn is evidently
suffering (though he declines to admit it himself) from mental anxiety.
If he is to have a chance for his life, that anxiety must be set at
rest. Is it in your power to relieve it?”
“It is not even in my power, Mr. Speedwell, to tell you what it is.”
The surgeon bowed, and went on:
“The second caution that I have to give you,” he said, “is to keep him
from drinking spirits. He admits having committed an excess in that way
the night before last. In his state of health, drinking means literally
death. If he goes back to the brandy-bottle--forgive me for saying it
plainly; the matter is too serious to be trifled with--if he goes
back to the brandy-bottle, his life, in my opinion, is not worth five
minutes’ purchase. Can you keep him from drinking?”
Anne answered sadly and plainly:
“I have no influence over him. The terms we are living on here--”
Mr. Speedwell considerately stopped her.
“I understand,” he said. “I will see his brother on my way home.”
He looked for a moment at Anne. “You are far from well yourself,” he
resumed. “Can I do any thing for you?”
“While I am living my present life, Mr. Speedwell, not even your skill
can help me.”
The surgeon took his leave. Anne hurried back up stairs, before Geoffrey
could re-enter the cottage. To see the man who had laid her life
waste--to meet the vindictive hatred that looked furtively at her out
of his eyes--at the moment when sentence of death had been pronounced on
him, was an ordeal from which every finer instinct in her nature shrank
in horror.
Hour by hour, the morning wore on, and he made no attempt to communicate
with her, Stranger still, Hester Dethridge never appeared. The servant
came up stairs to say goodby; and went away for her holiday. Shortly
afterward, certain sounds reached Anne’s ears from the opposite side of
the passage. She heard the strokes of a hammer, and then a noise as of
some heavy piece of furniture being moved. The mysterious repairs were
apparently being begun in the spare room.
She went to the window. The hour was approaching at which Sir Patrick
and Blanche might be expected to make the attempt to see her.
For the third time, she looked at the letter.
It suggested, on this occasion, a new consideration to her. Did the
strong measures which Sir Patrick had taken in secret indicate alarm
as well as sympathy? Did he believe she was in a position in which
the protection of the law was powerless to reach her? It seemed just
possible. Suppose she were free to consult a magistrate, and to own to
him (if words could express it) the vague presentiment of danger which
was then present in her mind--what proof could she produce to satisfy
the mind of a stranger? The proofs were all in her husband’s favor.
Witnesses could testify to the conciliatory words which he had spoken to
her in their presence. The evidence of his mother and brother would show
that he had preferred to sacrifice his own pecuniary interests rather
than consent to part with her. She could furnish nobody with the
smallest excuse, in her case, for interfering between man and wife.
Did Sir Patrick see this? And did Blanche’s description of what he and
Arnold Brinkworth were doing point to the conclusion that they were
taking the law into their own hands in despair? The more she thought of
it, the more likely it seemed.
She was still pursuing the train of thought thus suggested, when the
gate-bell rang.
The noises in the spare room suddenly stopped.
Anne looked out. The roof of a carriage was visible on the other side of
the wall. Sir Patrick and Blanche had arrived. After an interval Hester
Dethridge appeared in the garden, and went to the grating in the gate.
Anne heard Sir Patrick’s voice, clear and resolute. Every word he said
reached her ears through the open window.
“Be so good as to give my card to Mr. Delamayn. Say that I bring him
a message from Holchester House, and that I can only deliver it at a
personal interview.”
Hester Dethridge returned to the cottage. Another, and a longer interval
elapsed. At the end of the time, Geoffrey himself appeared in the front
garden, with the key in his hand. Anne’s heart throbbed fast as she saw
him unlock the gate, and asked herself what was to follow.
To her unutterable astonishment, Geoffrey admitted Sir Patrick without
the slightest hesitation--and, more still, he invited Blanche to leave
the carriage and come in!
“Let by-gones be by-gones,” Anne heard him say to Sir Patrick. “I only
want to do the right thing. If it’s the right thing for visitors to come
here, so soon after my father’s death, come, and welcome. My own notion
was, when you proposed it before, that it was wrong. I am not much
versed in these things. I leave it to you.”
“A visitor who brings you messages from your mother and your brother,”
Sir Patrick answered gravely, “is a person whom it is your duty to
admit, Mr. Delamayn, under any circumstances.”
“And he ought to be none the less welcome,” added Blanche, “when he is
accompanied by your wife’s oldest and dearest friend.”
Geoffrey looked, in stolid submission, from one to the other.
“I am not much versed in these things,” he repeated. “I have said
already, I leave it to you.”
They were by this time close under Anne’s window. She showed herself.
Sir Patrick took off his hat. Blanche kissed her hand with a cry of joy,
and attempted to enter the cottage. Geoffrey stopped her--and called to
his wife to come down.
“No! no!” said Blanche. “Let me go up to her in her room.”
She attempted for the second time to gain the stairs. For the second
time Geoffrey stopped her. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said; “she is
coming down.”
Anne joined them in the front garden. Blanche flew into her arms and
devoured her with kisses. Sir Patrick took her hand in silence. For
the first time in Anne’s experience of him, the bright, resolute,
self-reliant old man was, for the moment, at a loss what to say, at a
loss what to do. His eyes, resting on her in mute sympathy and interest,
said plainly, “In your husband’s presence I must not trust myself to
speak.”
Geoffrey broke the silence.
“Will you go into the drawing-room?” he asked, looking with steady
attention at his wife and Blanche.
Geoffrey’s voice appeared to rouse Sir Patrick. He raised his head--he
looked like himself again.
“Why go indoors this lovely weather?” he said. “Suppose we take a turn
in the garden?”
Blanche pressed Anne’s hand significantly. The proposal was evidently
made for a purpose. They turned the corner of the cottage and gained the
large garden at the back--the two ladies walking together, arm in arm;
Sir Patrick and Geoffrey following them. Little by little, Blanche
quickened her pace. “I have got my instructions,” she whispered to Anne.
“Let’s get out of his hearing.”
It was more easily said than done. Geoffrey kept close behind them.
“Consider my lameness, Mr. Delamayn,” said Sir Patrick. “Not quite so
fast.”
It was well intended. But Geoffrey’s cunning had taken the alarm.
Instead of dropping behind with Sir Patrick, he called to his wife.
“Consider Sir Patrick’s lameness,” he repeated. “Not quite so fast.”
Sir Patrick met that check with characteristic readiness. When
Anne slackened her pace, he addressed himself to Geoffrey, stopping
deliberately in the middle of the path. “Let me give you my message from
Holchester House,” he said. The two ladies were still slowly walking on.
Geoffrey was placed between the alternatives of staying with Sir Patrick
and leaving them by themselves--or of following them and leaving Sir
Patrick. Deliberately, on his side, he followed the ladies.
Sir Patrick called him back. “I told you I wished to speak to you,” he
said, sharply.
Driven to bay, Geoffrey openly revealed his resolution to give Blanche
no opportunity of speaking in private to Anne. He called to Anne to
stop.
“I have no secrets from my wife,” he said. “And I expect my wife to have
no secrets from me. Give me the message in her hearing.”
Sir Patrick’s eyes brightened with indignation. He controlled himself,
and looked for an instant significantly at his niece before he spoke to
Geoffrey.
“As you please,” he said. “Your brother requests me to tell you that
the duties of the new position in which he is placed occupy the whole
of his time, and will prevent him from returning to Fulham, as he had
proposed, for some days to come. Lady Holchester, hearing that I was
likely to see you, has charged me with another message, from herself.
She is not well enough to leave home; and she wishes to see you at
Holchester House to-morrow--accompanied (as she specially desires) by
Mrs. Delamayn.”
In giving the two messages, he gradually raised his voice to a louder
tone than usual. While he was speaking, Blanche (warned to follow her
instructions by the glance her uncle had cast at her) lowered her voice,
and said to Anne:
“He won’t consent to the separation as long as he has got you here. He
is trying for higher terms. Leave him, and he must submit. Put a candle
in your window, if you can get into the garden to-night. If not, any
other night. Make for the back gate in the wall. Sir Patrick and Arnold
will manage the rest.”
She slipped those words into Anne’s ears--swinging her parasol to
and fro, and looking as if the merest gossip was dropping from her
lips--with the dexterity which rarely fails a woman when she is called
on to assist a deception in which her own interests are concerned.
Cleverly as it had been done, however, Geoffrey’s inveterate distrust
was stirred into action by it. Blanche had got to her last sentence
before he was able to turn his attention from what Sir Patrick was
saying to what his niece was saying. A quicker man would have heard
more. Geoffrey had only distinctly heard the first half of the last
sentence.
“What’s that,” he asked, “about Sir Patrick and Arnold?”
“Nothing very interesting to you,” Blanche answered, readily. “I will
repeat it if you like. I was telling Anne about my step-mother,
Lady Lundie. After what happened that day in Portland Place, she has
requested Sir Patrick and Arnold to consider themselves, for the future,
as total strangers to her. That’s all.”
“Oh!” said Geoffrey, eying her narrowly.
“Ask my uncle,” returned Blanche, “if you don’t believe that I have
reported her correctly. She gave us all our dismissal, in her most
magnificent manner, and in those very words. Didn’t she, Sir Patrick?”
It was perfectly true. Blanche’s readiness of resource had met the
emergency of the moment by describing something, in connection with Sir
Patrick and Arnold, which had really happened. Silenced on one side, in
spite of himself, Geoffrey was at the same moment pressed on the other
for an answer to his mother’s message.
“I must take your reply to Lady Holchester,” said Sir Patrick. “What is
it to be?”
Geoffrey looked hard at him, without making any reply.
Sir Patrick repeated the message--with a special emphasis on that part
of it which related to Anne. The emphasis roused Geoffrey’s temper.
“You and my mother have made that message up between you, to try me!” he
burst out. “Damn all underhand work is what _I_ say!”
“I am waiting for your answer,” persisted Sir Patrick, steadily ignoring
the words which had just been addressed to him.
Geoffrey glanced at Anne, and suddenly recovered himself.