CHAPTER XXXIX
Night's black sheet drawn off the other half of the world is thrown over us; the dark side of the lantern is turned towards us. Esther has fallen asleep, with almost a happy smile upon her soft, parted lips. She is forgiven; and is there any sweetness like the sweetness of being pardoned, having sinned? He no longer hates her! That was not hate that looked out of his quick, keen eyes to-day, as he leant over her while she sat, dizzy and faint, on that churchyard slab, or as he knelt in strong emotion at her knees. And now, though at her own telling, he is going away from her to-morrow – though, when next they meet, either they will have put off mortality's tatters, God will have laid
"Death, like a kiss, across their lips;"
or else, to look and lean as he looked and leant to-day will be deadly sin – yet creeps there a sorrowful joy about her heart. He has given her back the past – the short, happy Felton past; no one can take it from her again; not even Miss Blessington, who has taken all else – present and future and all. She is dreaming of him now – dreaming that she is sitting in the library at Felton, in the fragrant gloom made by the lowered Venetian blinds, by dark oak bookshelves, by plentiful sweet flowers, and so sitting hears the sound of his quick feet coming along the passage. He is at the door – he is opening it. But, ah! what is this? – it will not open; it is stiff on its hinges. He is pushing it – pushing gently, pushing hard – but it will not move. What a stealthy noise it is he makes, as if he were afraid of some one hearing him! She starts up, broad awake; it is not all dream; there is some one pushing stealthily, yet audibly, against a door. For the first bewildered moment of sick fear she imagines that it is her own door on which this attempt is being made; but a moment's listening undeceives her. The sound comes from underneath her window, apparently. It is not rats this time; a rat, with all its ingenuity, would be puzzled to make a noise so distinctly human. Upon her mind there flashes suddenly the recollection of a door leading into the garden beneath her casement, but not so immediately beneath but that she can see it; a door that stands wide open all the summer through, when people step from house to garden, from garden to house, a hundred times a day, but which in winter is rarely used. She sits up motionless, while round her utter darkness surges. The noise is repeated: push – push! creak – creak! it is as if some one, with hand and knee, were attempting to obtain entrance. When light is withdrawn hearing becomes preternaturally sharpened; in an instant she has jumped out of bed, and run barefoot over the cold boards to the window. There, pulling aside the blind, she, trembling all over, peeps out. Moon is there none, but the joint light of countless star-squadrons, faint though it be, is yet strong enough to enable her distinctly to make out the figure of a man pressing itself against the door in question. With bodily eyes she at length looks upon that burglar, whom, with the terrified eyes of imagination, she had so often beheld. Whether he wear a crape mask or not it is too dark to discern. What is she to do? – she, in all probability, the only wakeful, conscious being in all that great house. For a minute she stands irresolute, while a rushing sound fills her ears, and her teeth chatter dismally in the cold. Shall she alarm the servants? But how to reach them? She does not even know the way to their sleeping-places. They are miles away, in the other wing of the house, where she has never been. Shall she go to Miss Blessington? At least she knows the way thither, though it is some distance off. But of what avail would that be? Of what use would two girls be, any more than one, against the onslaught of daring unscrupulous robbers? Shall she betake herself to St. John, whose room is but two doors off? No sooner does this idea suggest itself to her, than she puts it into practice. Hastily striking a light, and wrapping her dressing-gown round her, she opens her door, and, flying down the passage, knocks loudly at Mr. Gerard's. But Gerard, having a not particularly bad conscience, and a particularly good digestion, is a sound sleeper. She knocks again, more violently, almost to the flaying of her knuckles: "Mr. Gerard! – Mr. Gerard!"
"Hullo! who's there?" responds a sleepy voice.
"It's I! Esther!" she cries pantingly. "Open the door, please – this minute – quick!"
"Esther! – you!" says the voice, perfectly awake this time. "What on earth is the matter? – wait one second!"
He hurries on his clothes, and then hastens to accede to her request of opening the door.
"Are you ill?" he asks, anxiously, seeing her lean against the door-post, with death-white cheeks and terror-struck eyes.
"No – no!" she answers, hoarse and breathless, while St. John, candle, and door, all seem to be dancing a jig round her. "It is not I, but there's a man – getting into the house – by the garden-door. I saw him!"
"The devil there is!" replies the young man, with animation. "Here, give me your candle, and I'll go and see what he wants."
"No – no!" she cries, with all a woman's unreason. "Don't go; you must not!" (though for what other purpose she had sought his assistance she would have been puzzled to say). "I won't let you; you'll be killed!" and so, gasping, stretches out her white arms towards him, and, letting drop her candle, falls insensible, in the total darkness, into his embrace.
For a month past or more, the dream that has pursued Gerard night and day – unchecked in sleep, in waking faintly repressed by considerations of honour – is to hold that fair woman's form in his arms; and now he so holds her in reality. And yet, as the fulfilment of our wishes seldom affords us the gratification we had anticipated, so it is with him. Now that he has got her, he does not quite know what to do with her. Shall he, encumbered by his beautiful burden, grope his way back into his room, and lay her down there, while he goes and investigates into the cause of her terror and swoon? But the household, being alarmed, may find her there; and, so finding, would not the reputation of her, most innocent, be endangered? Her head droops heavy in its perfect lifelessness on his shoulder; her soft warm hair caresses his cheek in the blackness of the night. He looks down the passage. From Esther's open door a flood of light streams; at all events there is a candle left burning there. In a moment he has borne her into her own chamber, and has laid her most gently down upon the ginger-moreen bed. He has no time to try and revive her now. "Perhaps it was only her own imagination, poor child! – her own imagination, and those infernal rats!" is the hasty thought that has crossed his mind; but looking through the window, as she had done, he sees, as she had seen, a man's dim figure in the starlight. Without a moment's delay, without casting another thought even to the fair swooned woman he leaves behind him, Gerard runs down the corridor, his blood pleasantly astir with the thought of a possible adventure – through interminable dark galleries, down the gleaming cold of white stone stairs, through hall, saloon, north drawing-room, and justicing-room – till he reaches a narrow short passage that leads to the garden door. As he and his light draw near, the noise suddenly ceases. He stands still for a moment, expecting to hear it repeated, but it is not. Setting down his candle, therefore, he advances towards the door and unfastens it – it is secured by an old-fashioned catch inside – opens it, and looks out into the night. At first he can discern nothing but the chill wintry garden, and the million stars scattered broadcast over God's one great unenclosed field of the sky; but a second glance reveals to him a dim figure crouching indistinct in the shadow of a projecting buttress.
"Who's there?" he cries, in a loud clear voice.
No answer.
"Who's there?" he repeats. "If you don't answer, I'll fire."
Firing, in this instance, must mean using the flat candlestick as a projectile, for other weapon has Mr. Gerard none. Hardly have the words left his mouth, however, before the figure springs forth from its hiding-place, and stands erect before him.
"Don't fire, sir, please; it's I."
Livery-buttons flash in the starlight: behold the culprit revealed! – a young and lighthearted footman, who has on one or two previous occasions been suspected of a too great proclivity towards the nocturnal festivities of the "Chequers." A sense of infuriation at the bald tame end of the adventure gets possession of St. John.
"What the devil do you mean, sir, skulking here, alarming the whole household, and frightening the young ladies out of their senses?" he asks, with a gruff asperity not unworthy of his papa.
"If you please, sir, I was only – only – taking a bit of a walk in the park, sir."
"A likely tale!" cries St. John, angrily. "A walk in the park at this time of night! Come, don't let us have any lies, my good fellow; that is covering a small fault with a much greater one. You were at the 'Chequers,' I suppose? Come, out with it!"
"If you please, sir," replies the man, hanging his head, and looking very sheepish, "there was a young woman, as come all the way from Shelford, and as she was a bit timid, I promised to send her home."
"A young woman!" repeats St. John, repressing an inclination to smile. "Well, next time, you must be good enough to choose more seasonable hours for your meetings with young women."
"And when I come back, sir, I found all the house made up for the night, and I could not get no one to hear me; and I thought as how, very like, I might find this 'ere door open, if so be as Betsy had forgot to bolt it, as she mostly does, only it is so plaguy stiff on its 'inges – "
"And, for a wonder, Betsy had not forgotten to bolt it," interrupts Gerard, drily. "Well, don't let us have anything of this kind again, or, I warn you, you'll be packed off without a character."
Relieved at being let off so easily, the young fellow slinks away, and Gerard retraces his steps upstairs again. He cannot help laughing as he thinks of poor Esther's tragic fears, of her agonised pleadings: "You must not go! I won't let you go! you'll be killed!"
"If I'm never in nearer peril of death than I was to-night," he thinks, "I have every chance of outliving Methuselah. Was ever mountain delivered of so contemptible a mouse?" He laughs again. "'I won't let you! you'll be killed!' Poor little thing! I wonder has she come to herself yet! I must let her know that this bloodthirsty villain has not slain me outright this time." Having reached her door, he pauses and listens. There is no sound within. He knocks gently – no answer: knocks again – still no reply. Half-hesitating, as one that stands doubtful on the threshold of a church, he opens the door and enters. The light burns on the dressing-table, and she lies still prone, where he had laid her, on the bed, still completely insensible. This swoon is horribly deathlike:
".........But she lies
Not in the embrace of loyal death, who keeps
His bride for ever, but in treacherous arms
Of sleep, that sated, will restore to grief
Her snatch'd a sweet space from his cruel clutch."
Her head is thrown back, and her round chin slightly raised. Over the tossed pillow wander the tangled riches of her swart hair; nerveless on the counterpane lie the white, carven hands and blue-veined wrists, on which the faint fine lines make a tender network. Half-shadowed by her dressing-gown, half-emerging from it gleam bare feet,
"That make the blown foam neither swift nor white."
He leans over her, gazing with passionate admiration at the heavy shut lids and upward curling lashes – with passionate admiration mixed with sharp pain; for he can see, plainlier now in this long quiet look than in the hasty, stolen glances he has hitherto given her, the purple stains under closed eyes, the little depressions in the rounded cheek, the droop of the sweet sorrowful mouth. Iachimo's words recur to him – Iachimo's, as he gazed in his treachery upon the sleeping beauty of Imogen:
"...... Cytherea!
How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily!
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss – one kiss! Bubies unparagon'd,
How dearly they do't! – 'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper
Bows towards her, and would underpeep her lids
To see the enclosed lights now canopied
Under those windows........."
But looking at a person with ever such warm approbation will not recover them from a swoon. What is he to do? He is horribly puzzled, so seldom before has he seen a fainted fellow-Christian. Vague ideas of having heard of burnt feathers held under nostrils recur to his mind. But whence to obtain feathers, unless he takes a pair of scissors and snips a hole in the feather-bed? There is nothing in all the great room more feathery than the stumpy end of an old quill pen, with which Miss Craven is wont to indite her small accounts. Another specific flashes before his mental eye. Smelling-salts! He walks to the dressing-table, and carefully overlooks its slender load: brushes and combs, a Bible, and a fat pincushion – neither essence, unguent, nor scent of any kind. Esther's toilette apparatus is but meagre. Shall he throw cold water over her? What! and deluge all the ginger moreen bed, thereby making it an even more undesirable resting-place than it is at present? Quite at a loss what to do, he returns to the bedside, and begins to chafe her cold hands between his two warm ones. Then he stoops over her, trying to discover any smallest sign of returning consciousness. When his lips are so close to hers, how can he help laying them yet closer? Men seldom do resist any temptation, unless it is very weak, and the objections to it very overwhelming. This temptation is not weak, and there are absolutely no objections to it. No one will ever know of this theft – not even the person upon whom it is committed: it will do her no harm, and to kiss her even thus unknowing, unreturning, gives him a bitter joy. But, having once kissed her, he refrains himself, nor lays his lips a second time upon hers. Something of shame comes over him, as one that has taken advantage of another's helplessness – one that, for an instant, has let the brute within him get the upper hand of the man. Only he caresses gently her two cold hands, and his eyes dwell on her face, watching longingly for the first small symptom of back-coming life. His patience is rewarded, after a time; after a time there comes a quivering about the eyelids, a tremor about the mouth – then a deep-drawn sighing respiration. Always with a sigh does the soul come back to its dark cottage, having journeyed away from it for awhile. The curtain-lids sweep back from the spirit's windows; and, pale and clear, her eyes' dark glories shine upon him, conscious yet bewildered. Then a little stealing red, like the tint that dwelt in a sea-shell's lips, flows into each pure cheek; then comes full consciousness, and with it recollected terrors. "Where is he?" she asks, in a low frightened voice. "Is he gone? – did he get in? – did he hurt you?"
"He was not a very formidable burglar, after all," Gerard answers, with a reassuring smile: "it was only Thomas, who had been seeing his sweetheart home, and was trying to get into the house without being heard."
"Oh, I'm so glad! But" (her eyes straying confusedly round the room) "how did I get here? When last I remember any thing I was in the passage."
"I carried you here."
"And then went and found out about this man?"
"Yes."
"And then came back here?"
"Yes. I hope you don't think me very impertinent," he says, apologetically; "but I could not bear the idea of your lying here, insensible, without any one making an attempt to bring you round."
Recollecting what his own method of bringing her round had been, his conscience gives him a compunctious stab. She blushes furiously, and, raising herself into a sitting posture, begins to twist up her hair with both hands.
"You are better now," he says, tenderly, but with perfect respect; "I will go."
He moves towards the door, but, before he can reach it, it flies open hastily, and Constance, dishevelled, dressing-gowned, flurried out of all likeness to herself, bursts in. "Oh, Miss Craven! I'm so frightened! I heard people talking outside —St. John!!"
Mrs. Siddons might have been defied to crowd more solemnly tragic emphasis into one word than does Miss Blessington into the innocent dissyllable, "St. John!"
"Well!" replies St. John, tartly, vexed past speaking at being discovered in such an utterly false position.
"I suppose I may be allowed to ask what brings you here?" she says, drawing herself up to her stately height.
"You certainly may," he answers, endeavouring to recover his self-possession; "and I have not the slightest objection to telling you. What brought me here was the endeavour to recover Miss Craven from a faint into which she fell on coming to tell me – as the only person within her reach – that a man was, as she imagined, endeavouring to break into the house."
Even to his own ears this tale, as he tells it, sounds wofully improbable.
"And you took no steps to prevent him?" cries Constance, quickly; her fears for her personal safety, for the moment, outweighing the claims of outraged virtue.
"Pardon me! I did; but having discovered that it was only one of the footmen, who had been accidentally locked out, I came back to tell Miss Craven so, if she were recovered! and, if not, to give her that assistance which anyone human being may render to another without being called to account for it."
Having spoken, he folds his arms, and confronts her, calm and stately as herself.
"I should hardly have imagined it was your business," she replies, with scarce-concealed incredulity. "May I ask why you could not ring for the servants?"
"Because, as you are well aware," he answers, trying to quell his rising anger, "if I were to ring from now till doomsday, not a soul would hear me; all the bells ring downstairs, and the servants' bedrooms are at least a quarter of a mile distant up-stairs."
"Why could not you have come to me, then?"
"The impropriety would, in that case, have been at least equal," he answers, sarcastically; "and, to tell you the truth, such a course never occurred to me."
Something in his tone irritates her. "It is, of course, no concern of mine," she says, with icy coldness. "If Miss Craven chooses to receive the visits of gentlemen, HERE, at two o'clock in the morning, it does me no harm!"
She moves towards the door, but he places himself between her and it; and, grasping her wrist with unconscious roughness, speaks in a voice low and hoarse with anger, while his roused wrath glances upon her from out of his grey eyes – the eyes that hitherto have looked upon her only with indifference.
"Constance! what do you mean by these insults? How dare you give utterance to them? Is your own mind so impure that you cannot believe in the purity of others?"
"You must allow that it is at least an equivocal position," she answers, half-frightened by his stern looks, but keeping resolutely to her text.
"It is," he answers, remorsefully; "I allow it – I bitterly feel it. And yet, if it were only myself that were concerned, I should scorn to descend to any more explanation than that I have already given you; but for the sake of this most innocent girl, whom by my folly I have compromised, I swear to you, Constance – I solemnly take God to witness! – that it is exactly and simply as I have told you. Miss Craven had not recovered from her insensibility more than two minutes before you came into the room; I was in the act of leaving it as you entered. This is the whole plain truth: do you believe it?"
She does not answer.
"Do you believe it?" he repeats, earnestly.
The mulish look comes into her face – the look he has begun to know so well.
"It cannot be of much consequence to you whether I believe it or not," she answers, still with that freezing calm of voice and face. "You have, at all events, adopted the best method of obtaining your release from that engagement, which you so broadly hinted, only yesterday afternoon, that you wished to be free from. You have your wish – you are free!"
"As you will," he answers, gloomily. "God knows there never was much love in our connection; an iller-mated pair never came together; it was a mere matter of business on both sides. But, as to saying that the pure accident which has brought Miss Craven and me into slight and transient collision to-night can have any influence upon the conclusion or continuance of our engagement – it is tantamount to telling me that what I have sworn to you, upon my honour as a gentleman, to be true, is false!" he says, his face growing white and fierce.
"Is it?" she says, with a quietly enraging smile; having that confidence in the shield of womanhood, which makes so many a woman gall a man to the uttermost, and expect him to stand by, serene, polite, and smiling. "Unfortunately," she continues, "I am behind the spirit of the age; I am shackled with obsolete old notions of propriety and decency; and therefore – as you have no longer any smallest control over my actions – will you be so good as to allow me to go?"
He drops her hand instantly, and, opening the door for her, bows his head haughtily, saying, "Go! I have neither the wish nor the power to detain you;" and as he so speaks she passes out.
Meanwhile Esther, having slidden from her bed, stands with trembling limbs, grasping the back of a chair, and gazing from speaker to speaker with a world of surprise and horror in her great innocent eyes. As Miss Blessington leaves the room, St. John turns to her:
"My darling!" he says, with an accent of passionate remorse, "how will you ever forgive me for having exposed you to this!"
She turns away from him, and covers her burning face with her hands. "Go!" she says, faintly – "go, this minute! Don't say another word! Don't give her any more reason for her wicked slanders! Go!"
And he goes.