RACHEL LAKE SEES WONDERFUL THINGS BY MOONLIGHT FROM HER WINDOW.
Though Rachel was unfit for letter-writing, she was still more unfit for
slumber. She leaned her temple on her hand, and her rich light hair half
covered her fingers, and her amazing interview with Dorcas was again
present with her, and the same feeling of bewilderment. The suddenness
and the nature of the disclosures were dream-like and unreal, and the
image of Dorcas remained impressed upon her sight; not like Dorcas,
though the same, but something ghastly, wan, glittering, and terrible,
like a priestess at a solitary sacrifice.
It was late now, not far from one o'clock, and around her the terrible
silence of a still night. All those small sounds lost in the hum of
midday life now came into relief--a ticking in the wainscot, a crack now
and then in the joining of the furniture, and occasionally the tap of a
moth against the window pane from outside, sounds sharp and odd, which
made her wish the stillness of the night were not so intense.
As from her little table she looked listlessly through the window, she
saw against the faint glow of the moonlight, the figure of a man who
seized the paling and vaulted into the flower garden, and with a few
swift, stumbling strides over the flower-beds, reached the window, and
placing his pale face close to the glass, she saw his eyes glittering
through it; he tapped--or rather beat on the pane with his fingers--and
at the same time he said, repeatedly: 'Let me in; let me in.'
Her first impression, when she saw this person cross the little fence at
the road-side was, that Mark Wylder was the man. But she was mistaken;
the face and figure were Stanley Lake's.
She would have screamed in the extremity of her terror, but that her
voice for some seconds totally failed her; and recognising her brother,
though like Rhoda, in Holy Writ, she doubted whether it was not his
angel, she rose up, and with an awful ejaculation, she approached the
window.
'Let me in, Radie; d-- you, let me in,' he repeated, drumming incessantly
on the glass. There was no trace now of his sleepy jeering way. Rachel
saw that something was very wrong, and beckoned him toward the porch in
silence, and having removed the slender fastenings of the door, it
opened, and he entered in a rush of damp night air. She took him by the
hand, and he shook hers mechanically, like a man rescued from shipwreck,
and plainly not recollecting himself well.
'Stanley, dear, what's the matter, in Heaven's name?' she whispered, so
soon as she had got him into her little drawing-room.
'He has done it; d-- him, he has done it,' gasped Stanley Lake.
He looked in her face with a glazed and ashy stare. His hat remained on
his head, overshadowing his face; and his boots were soiled with clay,
and his wrapping coat marked, here and there, with the green of the stems
and branches of trees, through which he had made his way.
'I see, Stanley, you've had a scene with Mark Wylder; I warned you of
your danger--you have had the worst of it.'
'I spoke to him. He took a course I did not expect. I'm not well.'
'You've broken your promise. I see you have used _me_. How base; how
stupid!'
'How could I tell he was such a _fiend_?'
'I told you how it would be. He has frightened you,' said Rachel, herself
frightened.
'D-- him; I wish I had done as you said. I wish I had never come here.
Give me a glass of wine. He has ruined me.'
'You cruel, wretched creature!' said Rachel, now convinced that he had
compromised her as he threatened.
'Yes, I was wrong; I'm sorry; things have turned out different. Who's
that?' said Lake, grasping her wrist.
'Who--where--Mark Wylder?'
'No; it's nothing, I believe.'
'Where is he? Where have you left him?'
'Up there, at the pathway, near the stone steps.'
'Waiting there?'
'Well, yes; and I don't think I'll go back, Radie.'
'You _shall_ go back, Sir, and carry my message; or, no, I could not
trust you. I'll go with you and see him, and disabuse him. How could
you--how _could_ you, Stanley?'
'It was a mistake, altogether; I'm sorry, but I could not tell there was
such a devil on the earth.'
'Yes, I told you so. _He_ has frightened _you_' said Rachel.
'He _has_, _maybe_. At any rate, I was a fool, and I think I'm ruined;
and I'm afraid, Rachel, you'll be inconvenienced too.'
'Yes, you have made him savage and brutal; and between you, I shall be
called in question, you wretched fool!'
Stanley was taking these hard terms very meekly for a savage young
coxcomb like him. Perhaps they bore no very distinct meaning just then to
his mind. Perhaps it was preoccupied with more exciting ideas; or, it may
be, his agitation and fear cried 'amen' to the reproach; at all events,
he only said, in a pettish but deprecatory sort of way--
'Well, where's the good of scolding? how can I help it now?'
'What's your quarrel? why does he wait for you there? why has he sent you
here? It must concern _me_, Sir, and I insist on hearing it all.'
'So you shall, Radie; only have patience just a minute--and give me a
little wine or water--anything.'
'There is the key. There's some wine in the press, I think.'
He tried to open it, but his hand shook. He saw his sister look at him,
and he flung the keys on the table rather savagely, with, I dare say, a
curse between his teeth.
There was running all this time in Rachel's mind, and had been almost
since the first menacing mention of Wylder's name by her brother, an
indistinct remembrance of something unpleasant or horrible. It may have
been mere fancy, or it may have referred to something long ago
imperfectly heard. It was a spectre of mist, that evaporated before she
could fix her eyes on it, but was always near her elbow.
Rachel took the key with a faint gleam of scorn on her face and brought
out the wine in silence.
He took a tall-stemmed Venetian glass that stood upon the cabinet, an
antique decoration, and filled it with sherry--a strange revival of old
service! How long was it since lips had touched its brim before, and
whose? Lovers', maybe, and how. How long since that cold crystal had
glowed with the ripples of wine? This, at all events, was its last
service. It is an old legend of the Venetian glass--its shivering at
touch of poison; and there are those of whom it is said, 'the poison of
asps is under their lips.'
'What's that?' ejaculated Rachel, with a sudden shriek--that whispered
shriek, so expressive and ghastly, that you, perhaps, have once heard in
your life--and her very lips grew white.
'Hollo!' cried Lake. He was standing with his back to the window, and
sprang forward, as pale as she, and grasped her, with a white leer that
she never forgot, over his shoulder, and the Venice glass was shivered on
the ground.
'Who's there?' he whispered.
And Rachel, in a whisper, ejaculated the awful name that must not be
taken in vain.
She sat down. She was looking at him with a wild, stern stare, straight
in the face, and he still holding her arm, and close to her.
'I see it all now,' she whispered.
'Who--what--what is it?' said he.
'I could not have fancied _that_,' she whispered with a gasp.
Stanley looked round him with pale and sharpened features.
'What the devil is it! If that scoundrel had come to kill us you could
not cry out louder,' he whispered, with an oath. 'Do you want to wake
your people up?'
'Oh! Stanley,' she repeated, in a changed and horror-stricken way. 'What
a fool I've been. I see it at last; I see it all now,' and she waved her
white hands together very slowly towards him, as mesmerisers move theirs.
There was a silence of some seconds, and his yellow ferine gaze met hers
strangely.
'You were always a sharp girl, Radie, and I think you do see it,' he said
at last, very quietly.
'The witness--the witness--the dreadful witness!' she repeated.
'I'll show you, though, it's not so bad as you fancy. I'm sorry I did not
take your advice; but how, I say, could I know he was such a devil? I
must go back to him. I only came down to tell you, because Radie, you
know you proposed it yourself; _you_ must come, too--you _must_, Radie.'
'Oh, Stanley, Stanley, Stanley!'
'Why, d-- it, it can't be helped now; can it?' said he, with a peevish
malignity. But she was right; there was something of the poltroon in him,
and he was trembling.
'Why could you not leave me in peace, Stanley?'
'I can't go without you, Rachel. I won't; and if we don't we're both
ruined,' he said, with a bleak oath.
'Yes, Stanley, I knew you were a coward,' she replied, fiercely and
wildly.
'You're always calling names, d-- you; do as you like. I care less than
you think how it goes.'
'No, Stanley; you know me too well. Ah! No, you sha'n't be lost if I can
help it.' Rachel shook her head as she spoke, with a bitter smile and a
dreadful sigh.
Then they whispered together for three or four minutes, and Rachel
clasped her jewelled fingers tight across her forehead, quite wildly, for
a minute.
'You'll come then?' said Stanley.
She made no answer, and he repeated the question.
By this time she was standing; and without answering, she began
mechanically to get on her cloak and hat.
'You must drink some wine first; he may frighten you, perhaps. You _must_
take it, Rachel, or I'll not go.'
Stanley Lake was swearing, in his low tones, like a swell-mobsman
to-night.
Rachel seemed to have made up her mind to submit passively to whatever he
required. Perhaps, indeed, she thought there was wisdom in his advice. At
all events she drank some wine.
Rachel Lake was one of those women who never lose their presence of mind,
even under violent agitation, for long, and who generally, even when
highly excited, see, and do instinctively, and with decision, what is
best to be done; and now, with dilated eyes and white face, she walked
noiselessly into the kitchen, listened there for a moment, then stole
lightly to the servants' sleeping-room, and listened there at the door,
and lastly looked in, and satisfied herself that both were still
sleeping. Then as cautiously and swiftly she returned to her
drawing-room, and closed the window-shutters and drew the curtain, and
signalling to her brother they went stealthily forth into the night air,
closing the hall-door, and through the little garden, at the outer gate
of which they paused.
'I don't know, Rachel--I don't like it--I'm not fit for it. Go back
again--go in and lock your door--we'll not go to him--_you_ need not, you
know. He may stay where he is--let him--I'll not return. I say, I'll see
him no more. I'll get away. I'll consult Larkin--shall I? Though that
won't do--he's in Wylder's interest--curse him. What had I best do? I'm
not equal to it.'
'We _must_ go, Stanley. You said right just now; be resolute--we are both
ruined unless we go. You have brought it to that--you _must_ come.'
'I'm not fit for it, I tell you--I'm not. You were right, Radie--I think
I'm not equal to a business of this sort, and I won't expose you to such
a scene. _You're_ not equal to it either, I think,' and Lake leaned on
the paling.
'Don't mind me--you haven't much hitherto. Go or stay, I'm equally ruined
now, but not equally disgraced; and go we must, for it is _your only_
chance of escape. Come, Stanley--for shame!'
In a few minutes more they were walking in deep darkness and silence,
side by side, along the path, which diverging from the mill-road,
penetrates the coppice of that sequestered gorge, along the bottom of
which flows a tributary brook that finds its way a little lower down into
the mill-stream. This deep gully in character a good deal resembles
Redman's Glen, into which it passes, being fully as deep, and wooded to
the summit at both sides, but much steeper and narrower, and therefore
many shades darker.
They had now reached those rude stone steps, some ten or fifteen in
number, which conduct the narrow footpath up a particularly steep
acclivity, and here Lake lost courage again, for they distinctly heard
the footsteps that paced the platform above.