A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.
This was what had happened to Hetty.
In the middle of the night she had woke up suddenly as on that occasion
when she had come to life out of her dreams, and felt the intolerable
darkness go chill to her very soul. What it was that awakened her,
whether sound or sensation, the rush of the cold night air, or only some
consciousness of trouble and horror, she never could tell. She woke, but
not to darkness this time. Her eyes went to the light instinctively--to
the faint long opening of the window, which though all moonlight was
gone still marked itself upon the darkness around. She woke with a gasp
and suppressed cry. Her first sensation was the freshness of the air,
which showed that her window was open, and then that something moved in
that lighter space through which the wind blew. A terror, to which all
her previous fright seemed only preliminary, a horror of anticipation
and certainty, froze her very soul. Whatever it was, it had come, it had
her at last. She lay paralyzed, not able to move; her eyes, the only
capable things in her, straining into that dimness, a little lighter
than the darkness, where something unformed and horrible moved: moved!
that could be no delusion. She saw it with all the clearness of her
young, keen faculties, strung into the most dreadful acuteness of
perception--not what it was, but that it moved, now blocking the faint
grey, wavering in it, moving out of it, in, into the darkness of her
room, near her, close to her. Hetty lay motionless, in a trance of
unspeakable terror. What it was she could not say. It would have been
less horrible had she been able to see it. It was something that moved,
that was all. And then there followed faint, stealthy sounds as if of
contact with the furniture, like some one groping in the dark: and
suddenly that dreadful something moved close to her, between her and the
window, touching the line of her bed. It wavered, seemed to pass, then
turned back. The miserable child did not breathe, kept still with one
last effort, turned to stone by delirious fear. But something, the
subtle consciousness that breathes from every living creature, betrayed
her in the portentous gloom. Suddenly she felt something; a hand--was it
a hand?--passed over her face; and then the thing, which was not
distinct enough to be called a shadow, dropped by her bedside, and drew
close--close with the breath of another human creature, upon her. “My
child, my little darling, my little darling! I’ve found you, I’ve found
you at last!” The breath, the voice, the touch of the cold hand, turned
Hetty’s brain. And then it was that those shrieks arose, the
indescribable, toneless, sharp discords, the cry of mortal terror passed
into delirium; and she knew no more.
“She is not dead,” said Mr. Darrell, examining with the candle the
horrible, fixed, staring eyes that saw nothing, that were unconscious of
his examination and undazzled by the light. “She is not dead. I am not
sure that she isn’t worse than dead.”
“How did it happen?” said the housekeeper, in quick, low tones.
“How can I tell you?--negligence! Get hot water, hot irons--anything
that is handiest. We must bring back the circulation, if that is
possible. Oh, thank you!” The young doctor threw a vague glance at the
white figure that suddenly appeared from behind the curtains, and got
into the bed beside Hetty’s marble form. He did not recognise who it
was. “That’s the best thing you can do; rub her feet, get the blood back
anyhow--anyhow. Get hot water, some of you, quick! Go on with that while
I go and get something for her.”
The housekeeper laid her hand upon him as he was hurrying away. “Is all
safe?” she asked in her low, quick voice. “Are you sure all’s safe?”
“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently; “what’s that in comparison with this?”
“It’s our first business all the same,” said the woman. The young doctor
made a despairing movement of his hand towards the bed and hurried away.
Miss Hofland had taken the girl’s inanimate figure into her arms. “I’m
almost too cold myself to be of any use to her,” she said, shivering at
the contact of the frozen limbs. Mrs. Mills put down her candle by the
bedside, where it threw a strange side light upon that tragic mask on
the pillow, with the open mouth and staring, awful eyes. Was it Hetty?
Was it possible it could be Hetty? All human identity as of feature, or
age, or character seemed to have gone out of the rigid face. The
housekeeper had her wits all about her--the self-command, Miss Hofland
instinctively reflected, of a person not taken by surprise. She gave a
few orders to the frightened women, who stood huddled together staring
at the foot of the bed, to shut the window, to light fires and prepare
hot water. Then she came back to the bedside, quite cool, professional,
unexcited. “If it’s cataleptic, all we can do won’t make much
difference,” she said calmly: and proceeded to open the clenched hands,
and disengage the coverings which were held as in a vice. “Ah!” said
Mrs. Mills, “she’s not so unconscious as she looks. She resisted me
then--only a little--but still she resisted. She’s coming round.”
“How can it have happened?” Miss Hofland asked. She had got over her
first fright and horror, and to talk over a patient, however alarming
may be his or her state, is a temptation which nurses, when there are
two of them, can rarely resist. They were full of human kindness and
interest, and doing everything for her that could be done; but their
very interest and anxiety found relief in this discussion of the case.
“Who can tell? She had left her window open again. She never could be
cured of that. Her mother must have some fad about open windows.”
“Then you think some one must have come in?”
“Some one? Who was there to come in? Something--perhaps one of the
cattle or something--meaning no harm; or perhaps she only imagined it.
Imagination is rather worse than fact.”
“I said a cow,” said Miss Hofland thoughtfully. “It would be very
strange finding a cow by your bedside in the middle of the night: it
might be any sort of a monster: but, goodness! not to overwhelm a girl
like that! I think she’s not quite so cold. I think she’s not quite so
rigid. Hetty, wake up, my dear!”
“Let her alone,” said the housekeeper. “She can’t hear you. If we get
her circulation back, that will be the best chance.”
“But how could it have happened?” repeated Miss Hofland, “for I don’t
much believe in the cow. I can’t say I believe in the cow. Oh, how her
poor eyes stare! Do you believe she doesn’t see, though she stares so?
Hetty! oh, shake it off, darling, shake it off! If you will only make an
effort!”
“What is the use?” said Mrs. Mills. “She can’t hear you. If she could,
it would be bad for her to be roused so. Young Darrell is very clever,
they say; he’ll do all that can be done.”
“He looked as if he knew what it was.”
“Oh, hush, here he is coming back! don’t let him hear you,” cried the
housekeeper, and then the colloquy came to an end.
But the case was not so simple as Miss Hofland thought. No power of
making an effort remained in poor little Hetty. Her previous terrors,
which had been chiefly of the imagination, had undermined her strength.
She had no longer any force to resist this overwhelming horror when it
came. Whether it was her intelligence which had been killed by the blow,
whether she were only stunned temporarily, or if it was a moral
paralysis of the whole being which had laid her low, could not be
divined. She came round a little from that first trance. After a time
her eyes could close, her breathing began to be faintly audible, the
rigidity of her limbs relaxed. After a longer interval she came to
herself so much as to say “Thank you” faintly to the nurses, and to
swallow, though with difficulty, the nourishment they administered.
During this period there had been the greatest difficulty in satisfying
Hetty’s correspondents at home. She had already fallen out of her early
punctuality in respect to letter-writing, which smoothed matters a
little; but when day by day went by without producing any amelioration
in her state, and when letters began to rain upon the house at Horton
full of demands for explanation, and to know what was the matter, Mr.
Darrell one day announced to the housekeeper with some haste, and an
unnecessary sharpness of tone, “I’ll tell you what it is. I’m going to
send for her mother, and that without delay.”
Mrs. Mills looked up in consternation. “Her mother!” she cried. “The
last woman in the world to come here!”
“She may be the last woman or anything else you please, but she is the
only person that has anything to do here, and I am going to send for
her. Look there! do you think that can be allowed to go on?” the young
man cried, turning half round to where Hetty sat like a waxen image,
supported by cushions in a chair. She lay back as white as the pillow
upon which her head rested, her eyelids flickering now and then, her
thin hands crossed in her lap. She made no complaint, said scarcely
anything except that feeble “Thank you,” when anything was brought her,
or when some of her anxious attendants paused to smooth her cushions, or
ask if she wanted anything. It was a sight to melt the hardest heart.
“And it is more than a week since it happened,” said young Darrell, “and
that is all we have been able to do. You are an excellent nurse, Mrs.
Mills; you have neglected nothing: and Miss Hofland does everything
that kindness can suggest: but you see yourself that we make no
progress. I can do nothing more; her mother may.”
“Time will make it all right,” the housekeeper said. “Of course I am
very sorry--I would give anything that it had not happened. Of course
the poor little thing has got a dreadful shock. But she is very young,
and in time she will get all right.”
“If you like to trust to time with such a delicate thing as a girl’s
life,” said the young doctor, “I don’t. We must do something. Either
that and try the effect of nature, or else I must have the best
authority from town to see her; and you know what questions a physician
would ask, and perhaps you know how we could answer him. I don’t.”
“Mr. Darrell,” said the housekeeper, “you’re my superior. I have to take
my orders from you. All the same, I consider that our first business is
to look after what we were put here for. I cannot acknowledge that a
child frightened, even though she is frightened into fits, is any reason
for giving up.”
“There are a hundred reasons for giving up,” cried the young man
passionately. “I would give up this moment if I could, if there was any
one to give up my charge to. It’s neither right nor necessary, what
we’re doing. I have never stopped regretting I undertook it, never
since----”
“Say the truth, Mr. Darrell, never since--this young lady came here!
I’ve seen it from the first. She’s not much more than a child, but you
think more of her than of every one else in the house.”
The young doctor blushed like a girl to the very roots of his hair. “I
have no intention of answering any such accusation,” he said. “It is
entirely uncalled for, and quite unjustifiable. I have done my duty to
the utmost, if such a charge could ever be any one’s duty. My doubts
have a very different foundation. But I don’t go so far as to sacrifice
life to my engagements, and therefore I’m going to telegraph to Mrs.
Asquith to beg her to come here at once, without an hour’s delay.”
“Then I’ll telegraph to Mrs. Rotherham,” said the housekeeper. “Oh,
dear! she is so far away. How can you betray a poor lady that is so far
away? I’ll send for the lawyer. It was he that brought this girl here,
and he had better come and take her away. Yes, that’s it. Let’s make a
compromise, Doctor. Send her away. To go home, of course, is the best
thing for her. Change of air, and change of scene, and her own
folks--that’s far, far better. I’ll run the chance of whatever she may
say when she gets better. Let us send her away.”
Mr. Darrell turned and looked again at the motionless figure in the
chair. His face softened into the deepest, tender pity. “If you think
what she was when she came here,” he said, “all full of life and spirit,
and to look at her now, like a withered flower! No. I can’t take the
responsibility of sending her away. Her mother, or a physician, one or
the other! I can’t have her life and her reason to answer for all alone.
I am going to telegraph to Mrs. Asquith, now.”
The housekeeper stopped him, catching at his arm. “Do you know who Mrs.
Asquith is?” she said.
“Mr. Tenby told me--a relation. Well, so much the better. I am sick of
my share in it,” cried the young man. They had been standing talking at
the window. Hetty had been moved to another room on the other side of
the house, where nothing could remind her of the terrible incident which
had changed her whole being, and which was lighted by a large recessed
window. He left the housekeeper standing there, and went up to the girl,
sitting motionless in her chair. “Is there anything you would like?” he
said. “Can I get you anything? Shall I move you nearer the window? Do
you think you would like to see any one? Shall I call Miss Hofland? Is
there any one whom you would like me to call?” There was a faint hope
in his mind that she would say “Mamma,” which she had cried so piteously
at first. But Hetty said nothing save “Thank you,” with the faintest
movement of her lips.
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