CHAPTER XXXIX. GETHSEMANE
By this time darkness had fallen, though it was still early in the afternoon. There was a high wind, moaning around among the leafless trees; and, from time to time, flakes of snow were falling – large, and far apart. As he descended the snow-clad steps, he stumbled and fell among the drift, but rose again immediately, covered with patches of whiteness, and pursued his way.
Was it the wind shrieking, or something in his own troubled brain? He looked wildly around him, plunging this, way and that, like a blind man. The darkness frothed before his eyes, and burst into spangled stars, as when one receives a violent blow, or as when one is sinking in deep water and choking for breath.
Presently he turned and looked back from the centre of the frozen lawn. Behind him, blacker than the blackness of the night, lay the great shadow of the Manor house; but from one window above the entrance came a feeble light. He knew the window well. It was that of the chamber wherein he had looked upon the dead.
Alone in the darkness, he threw up his arms and uttered a wail of despair. As his voice rose upon the wind, other voices seemed to echo him with sounds of mocking laughter. Haldane had told him that he had lost his soul alive-Indeed it seemed so, and hell was already around, and in him.
But he remembered his purpose, and hastened on. Whatever the issue might be, he was determined to hand over that man to the law, to make him expiate on the gallows his act of cowardly, treacherous vengeance. He had not spared her, and he should, at least, pay the penalty. Then, when he had avenged her death, he cared not what became of himself. He could die, too; yes, and would.
Ah! but the man was right, when he had torn his soul open and showed the cancerous sore within it. He had broken the laws of God, and he had lost eternally what he loved. There was no justification for him – none. He had been an adulterer in thought, if not in deed – a hypocrite, hiding a loathsome lust under the garment of religion. Why had he not been warned in time? He might, have known that the man he had to deal with – a man who believed in nothing – would pause at nothing. He remembered, too late, that monkish tale of jealousy and murder, which might have told him, had he not been so mad, what was lurking so pitilessly in the man’s mind. It was little comfort now to reflect that he was innocent in act. The consequences had been the same, as horrible, as irrevocable; as if he had sinned seventy times and seven. By his abominable solicitation, he had betrayed the woman he adored. Yes, he had killed her! What hope could there be for him, in this world or another, after that?
Nevertheless, he hastened on, fighting with his own thoughts in the darkness stumbling through the drifted snow. He found the avenue and entered it – passing into deeper darkness, hearing the wind shriek more loudly on every side. The police barrack was at Omberley, five miles distant. He would hasten there without delay, tell what had taken place, and return with the officers that night. He would not rest until he had the murderer bound and captured: for even yet, if he did come back quickly, he might escape.
Then he thought of all the shame, the scandal, which must assuredly come with the revelation of the truth. The women who had thought him almost a sainted creature, the villagers who had watched him with simple reverence – all who had respected him and heard the gospel of love from his lips, would point at him as a shameless creature, a scandal to his holy office. He could never mount the pulpit again, or walk in the sun. They would strip the priestly raiment from his back, and hound him away into the world. Even his own sister, who thought him the purest and best of men, would shrink from him with loathing; nay, how could he look her, or any pure creature, in the face?
All that, and more, he thought, could have been borne, could he only have restored the dead to life. His own fall and degradation would have been a trifle, if he had not sacrificed that sainted being – the woman of his early love, the creature of his idolatry, the object of his insane and fatal passion. She had suffered for his guilt, but she had not atoned for it. Nothing could atone, nothing. How gladly that night would he have died, if by death he could have restored her to the sunshine of the world!
Then, in his despair, he reproached her God – the God who had made her so beautiful, and him so weak. Why had God ever brought them together? Why, having once separated them, had He ever caused them to meet again? It was cruel, unmerciful, to tempt a man so much! He had only asked for a little love, and without love life was so dark. And before temptation came, had he not done God good service? More than one doubting heart had been turned, by his persuasion, back to the faith of Christ; more than one erring sinner had, through him, been led back, penitent and weeping, to the Church’s fold! All men had respected him for his blameless life, for his good deeds.
He had been kind to the suffering, generous to the poor. He had been an example of Christian charity to his fellows. He had reflected honour on the university which gave him to the Church, and on the Church which had accepted him into her bosom. Though so young, he had risen high, by his own talents, his intelligence, his own blameless character. And now he had lost everything, because he had pined for a little sympathy, a little love.
As these thoughts passed through his brain, his eyes were blinded with tears, and, in utter self-pity, he sobbed aloud.
How dark it was! how miserably dark and cold! He could not see an inch before him, could not even perceive the white ground beneath his feet; but the wind wailed louder and louder on every side.
He remembered how gladly, the previous day, he had proclaimed the good tidings of the birth of Christ. The bells had rung, and from every side, over the white landscape, cold, but cheerful and light with sunshine, the people had come gathering in – rich and poor, old and young, all gaily clad for Christmas-tide. He had stood away – stoled in the pulpit, and had seen the shining faces upturned reverently to his, and had heard the clear voices ring out in happiness and praise. Ah, it had been a beautiful time! Only yesterday, and already it seemed so far away!
In his misery, he quite forgot how much and how often he had fretted under the yoke of his priestly duties; how he had despised the ignoble natures of his flock; how he had panted again and again for a freer life and for more eventful days! What he had lost for ever now seemed strangely dear. As he reviewed his life in the village, he remembered none of its cares, none of its indignities; it seemed all peaceful, all beautiful,’ now! Yes, it was heaven, though he had not known it; heaven, though he had fallen from it. And he could never return to it again; never preach in the church, never minister to man or woman, never know the blessing and the peace of a divine vocation any more!
Suddenly he paused, stumbling in bewilderment and terror He had stepped into a deep snowdrift, which rose nearly to his knees. He looked wildly round, but could discern nothing. He pressed his way forward, and stumbled against the frozen root of a great tree. He turned and groped another way; again something interposed. Gradually, straining his eyes through the darkness, he discerned that he was surrounded by trees on every side.
He had wandered from the avenue, and was long among the plantations – he could not tell in what direction.
How long he wandered among the dreary woods he could not tell.
A mortal fever was upon him, and he struggled confusedly this way and that, sometimes stumbling and falling amid the snow, sometimes coming violently against the frozen tree-trunks, sometimes rushing among briers and tangled underwoods which clutched him like fingers, and rent his clothing as he tore himself away.
He shouted, thinking he might be heard. His shout rose faintly on the wind, and was echoed by unearthly voices.
Then he seemed to see sheeted shapes passing before him; ghostly faces flashing into his own, and fading away. He saw her face, marble-white as he had seen it in death, and with horrible rebuking eyes.
Ah, that night! that night! He passed an eternity of agony, in a few hours!
At last he fell, half fainting, on the stump of a tree, and rested, afraid to venture further. Pausing there, he clasped his hands together and prayed.
For her; for himself. He prayed to Heaven for help and mercy. In his abject fear and humiliation, he prostrated his soul before his God. His strength seemed failing him, and he felt as if he were dying. Ah, the horrible darkness! the nameless terror! Would he ever live to see the light again?
The snow thickened and fell upon him; he shook it off again and again, but still it fell, blinding and covering him. He became very cold, despite the fever in his veins – cold as death. Afraid to perish that way, he rose to his feet and struggled on.
At last, after wandering on and on for an indefinite space of time, he saw a light breaking through the trees. He shouted, and ran forward.
The light came from the windows of some building, and streamed brightly out into the darkness, lighting up the snowy ground, revealing the trees and branches in silhouette. Wild and despairing, he approached nearer, and saw a door, through the hinges of which shone a faint radiance. Then he recognized the place. It was the ruined chapel of Foxglove Manor.
He did not hesitate, but pushed open the door. He found himself in the building which George Haldane had turned from a temple of God into a laboratory of science. In the centre of it, surrounded by books, papers, and scientific implements of divers kinds, a man sat, calmly writing by the light of a brilliant oil-lamp.
As Santley entered, he looked up. The master of Foxglove Manor.
Spectral and ghastly, his hair dishevelled, his dress torn and disordered, covered with mud, the minister staggered into the chapel. Who, in that frenzied apparition, would have recognized the sometime spruce and comely Vicar of Omberley? In one of his falls he had cut his forehead on a tree or stone, and blood was oozing from the wound. He was a horrible sight – horrible and pitiable.
Haldane looked up, and nodded.
“So, it is you!” he said, pushing his papers aside.
A large meerschaum pipe lay on the table beside him, with a box of lucifers. He struck a light, and quietly began to smoke, as he continued —
“You have returned quickly. Pray, have you brought the police with you?” Without answering him directly, Santley approached the table, and, fixing his wild eyes upon him, demanded in a hollow voice —
“What are you doing?”
The philosopher leant back in his chair, and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.
“Writing, as you see.”
“Writing!” echoed Santley.
“Yes; at my history. To-night’s experience has furnished me with material for a new chapter – on ‘Spiritual Vivisection.’”
The man was inconceivable, even satanic. Santley was again dominated by his supernatural sang froid’’ his supreme self-control.
“Have you a heart, man?” he cried, gazing in horror upon him.
Haldane smiled diabolically.
“A reference to the most rudimentary system of physiology,” he replied, “would convince you that I could not exist without one.”
“Death in your house, murder in your heart, you can sit here so calmly, still busy with your blasphemies? You cannot be human.”
“On the contrary, I am particularly human.”
“No, no; you are a devil! a devil!”
“If you were a philosopher, you would know that devils do not exist; even your own not too intellectual Church has rejected demonology. I am simply a physician; yours.”
“Mine! my physician.”
“I have opened your heart, to show you the canker existing within it. I have shown you, in an interesting experiment, that the disease of supersensuous desire, which with you is constitutional and inherited, culminates in moral scrofula, imbecility, hysterical mania, and death. It is, moreover, capable of spreading contagion – a sort of cancerous cell, which, inhaled by the lips or from the polluted atmosphere, must inevitably bring disease and death to others. The kiss of the leper, reverend sir! For the future, I should recommend you to carry a clapper with you, as they do in the East, to warn off the unwary.”
The comparison was a hideous one but indeed, at that moment, it did not seem inappropriate. Wild, ghastly, dishevelled, bloody, and degraded, Santley looked a creature to be avoided and even feared. He listened to the cold periods of his torturer, fixed his pale eyeballs, which seemed vacant of all light, upon his face; then suddenly, with a spasmodic scream, he leapt upon him and seized him by the throat.
The attack was so unexpected and so sudden, that Haldane was taken by surprise. He sprang to his feet, while the other clung around him like a wild cat. But the struggle was only brief.
In another minute he had gripped the vicar with his powerful arms, and pinned him against the wall of the chapel. There he writhed and wrestled, impotent, furious, foaming at the mouth.
“If you don’t control yourself better,” said the philosopher, between his set teeth, “you will soon want a strait-waistcoat. Be quiet, will you?”
And he shook him as a wiry terrier shakes a rat.
“Let me go!”
“I have a good mind to give you your coup de grâce?” returned Haldane, with a little less composure than before. “Why, I could strangle you if I pleased.”
“Strangle me, then!”
“Bah! you are not worth the trouble,” said the other, throwing him off. “Tell me, again, where are your police officers? Why did you not bring them?”
Utterly conquered and helpless, Santley did not reply. Haldane pointed to the door.
“At any rate, get out of this. I am going to close my studies and go to bed.”
And he proceeded to turn down the lamp, previous to blowing it out.
Santley moved towards the door. As he did so, the lamp was extinguished, and the chapel left in pitch darkness. He groped his way out, and stood waiting on the threshold. The philosopher followed, and they stood together in the open darkness. Then Haldane closed the door and turned the key.
“Your way lies yonder, reverend sir,” he said, pointing towards the avenue. “Take my advice and sleep upon it, before you return to arrest me. I will keep your secret, if you will keep mine.”
“I will make no terms with you,” cried the vicar. “I will return, and have you dragged to justice.”
“As you please,” was the reply. Haldane walked slowly in the direction of the house. Santley, after a minute’s wild hesitation, rushed away again into the night.
By this time the snow had ceased falling, and the air was a little clearer. With little difficulty, Santley found the avenue, and, running rather than walking, followed it till he reached the lodge.
As he did so, he heard voices singing in merry chorus. He waited, and presently a light cart drove up, turning into the avenue. He called out, and it stopped. He came close, and found that it contained five persons, two men-and three women.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are you going?”
Mrs. Feme, the lodge-keeper, who was one of the party, informed him that they were Mr. Haldane’s servants, returning from their holiday excursion to the neighbouring town.
“Go up to the house at once!” he cried. “Seize your master, detain him till I return. Your mistress has been murdered!”
They cried out in terror and astonishment, asking for particulars.
“I cannot stay,” he answered wildly.
“Go on, and watch till I return. It is as I say; he has murdered your mistress. I am going for the police.”
Then he fled on in the direction of the village. But as he went, his pace seemed to fail him, and his head to go round and round.
At last he reached the village, where all was dark and desolate, and, passing by the shadow of his own church, reached the Vicarage gate. Here he paused, almost spent. He could not go any further. He would go in and get a little brandy, then he would hasten on for assistance.
He staggered in through the gate, and across the garden. There was a light in the window, for Miss Santley was sitting up for her brother, wondering what had kept him so late. He crept close to the window and tapped upon it.
“Mary! Mary!” he moaned.
She heard him, looked out, and then opened the door, standing on the threshold with a lighted candle in her hand.
At the sight of his blood-stained face and disordered dress, she uttered a cry of fear.
As she did so, he stretched out his hands, and fell like a corpse across the threshold.
CHAPTER XL. THREE LETTERS
They carried him into the house and laid him on a bed; then, seeing him still speechless, and to all appearance senseless, Miss Santley sent for Dr. Spruce, who lived close by. By the time that the doctor, a homely old country practitioner, with much professional skill and worldly wisdom, entered the chamber, Santley was sitting up and talking incoherently. He tried to leave his bed and fly forth upon some wild errand, and his speech was a confused medley, in which the words “murder,” “poison,” and “Ellen Haldane,” were constantly repeated. He did not seem to recognize any one, and his whole appearance was alarming in the extreme.
Miss Santley told how she had found him, and in what condition. The doctor shook his head.
“I’m afraid it’s brain fever,” he muttered. “You must keep him very quiet.”
Before morning, the doctor’s prediction proved to be right. Brain fever of the most violent kind had set in. He lay as if at death’s door, incoherently raving.
Alarmed by the constant references to the one subject of “murder,” and the constant repetitions of Mrs. Haldane’s name, Miss Santley next day sent a messenger up to Foxglove Manor to make inquiries. Her messenger ascertained from Mrs. Feme, the lodge-keeper, that the vicar had been seen by the servants the previous night, in a state resembling mania, and had told them some wild story of Mrs. Haldane’s death by violence. For the rest, Mrs. Feme said, nothing of an extraordinary nature had occurred at the Manor, and her mistress, though slightly indisposed, was up and about.
So Miss Santley kept watch by the delirious man’s bedside, while he lay and fought for life.
The crisis passed. One morning the vicar opened his eyes, and saw his sister sitting silently close to his bed. The fever had almost left him, and he recognized his own room in the Vicarage.
“Is it you, Mary?” he asked, reaching out his hand, now worn almost to a skeleton.
“Yes, it is I. But you must not speak.”
“Have I been ill, Mary?”
“Yes; very, very ill.”
He closed his eyes, and seemed to fall into a sleep, which lasted for some hours. Suddenly he started up, as if listening, and seemed about to spring from the bed.
“What is it, dear?” asked his sister, softly soothing him.
He recognized her, and became calm in a moment.
“I was dreaming. I thought I was up at the Manor. Mary, quick – speak to me! Have they buried her?”
She looked at him in wonder and terror.
“Hush, dear! The doctor says you are to keep very quiet.”
“But I must know. Tell me, or you will kill me! What has happened? How long have I been lying here?”
“Many days. But you are better now.”
“Do you know what has taken place?” he whispered. “Ellen Haldane is dead – murdered! He killed her.”
She shook her head pityingly.
“No, no! Do not distress yourself, dear, or you will be ill again. Mrs. Haldane is quite well.”
“Quite well? No, no!”
“You have been dreaming, that is all.”
“Only dreaming?” he repeated, vacantly. “But I tell you I saw her, dead, shrouded for her grave. Mary, it must be true!”
She succeeded at last, after repeated assurances, in soothing his distracted spirit, and he fell asleep again, moaning to himself.
It was quite true, as his sister told him, that Mrs. Haldane lived. She did not tell him, however, that she had left the Manor, with her husband, and gone away back to Spain.
Was it all a dream, then, after all?
A week later, when Santley was convalescent, but still horribly overshadowed and perplexed, his sister gave him a letter, which (she said) had been left for him by the master of Foxglove Manor. It was marked “strictly private.” Santley waited until he was alone, and then, tearing it open with tremulous fingers, read as follows: —
“Sir,
“I hear that you have been ill. Before leaving for Spain, I have left this with your sister, with instructions that it is to be given you when you are strong enough to read and understand. What it contains, observe, is strictly between you and me; and if you keep your own counsel, no one will know the secret of your indisposition but ourselves.
“In the first place, be comforted by my assurance that my wife is in excellent health. If, in your delirium, you have been under delusions concerning her, dispel them; all that has passed. She lives; and you will live. If you have thought otherwise (and we know sick men have wild fancies), consider that you have merely had an extraordinary dream. Yet, remembering that men have often ere now been warned by visions of calamities to ensue as the consequence of their own mad acts, accept the dream as a sort of divine admonition – an inspiration to lead you towards a better and calmer life. In your dream, sir, you have had your own heart vivisected, and have thus been made conscious of its disease; you have suffered terribly, as all patients must suffer, under the knife. But you will be healed. You will begin the world afresh, and, God willing, become a new man, thanking God, every day you live, that it was only a dream.
“By the time you read this we shall be far away. With my sincere hopes for your perfect recovery, I am, sir, yours truly,
“George Haldane.
“P.S. – My wife knows nothing of your dream, in any of its phenomena. Some day, perhaps, I shall enlighten her, but not yet. She sends you her best wishes.”
That was all Santley read and re-read in amazement, not quite comprehending, yet dimly guessing that there had been some strange mystery. At last, relieved by the thought that all his guilty agony had perhaps been a dream indeed, he sunk back upon the pillow of his armchair, and wept aloud.
That same afternoon, as he sat looking at his loving nurse, he questioned her concerning Edith. It was the first time, since his recovery, that he had mentioned her name.
“Where is she? Have they heard from her? Is she well?”
“She is well, I believe,” replied Miss Santley. “Just after you fell ill, her aunt heard from her, and went away to join her in London. They are there together now.”
“Do you know their address?”
“Yes; I heard from Rachel that they are staying at the Golden Cross Hotel, near the station.”
In the evening, Santley insisted on having pen, ink, and paper. His sister begged him not to fatigue himself by writing, but he was determined.
“Charles,” she said softly, as she brought him what he wanted, “is it to Edith you are going to write?”
“Yes,” he replied; and she stooped and kissed him approvingly. Then she left him alone, and he wrote as follows: —
“Dearest Edith,
“Come to me; come back to Omberley. I have had a dangerous illness, but through it, God has opened my eyes. I love you, darling. We will be married at once in the dear old church. Yours till death,
“Charles Santley.”
Two days afterwards, the reply came, in Ellen’s own handwriting, thus:
“I, too, have had an illness, in which, also, God has been pleased to open my eyes. I know, now, that it is all over between us. I shall never marry you; I shall never return to Omberley. I am going abroad with my aunt, who knows all I have suffered, and approves an eternal separation.
“Edith Dove.”
Some months later, the vicar resigned his living in the parish, and disappeared from the scene of his early labours. The year following, it was publicly stated in the religious newspapers that the Rev. Charles Santley, sometime Vicar of Omberley, had entered the Church of Rome.