"Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first."
"Keep your arm covered from his sight."
"Ah--he knows the disfigurement is there!" She tried to hide the tears that filled her eyes.
"Well, ma"am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon."
In her secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor"s beauty, by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain. For though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite pa.s.sed away.
"They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it," replied the other anxiously. "It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath. They did not know if he was still alive--and I cannot remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be consulted. Dear me--what was his name? But you know."
"Not Conjuror Trendle?" said her thin companion, turning pale.
"Trendle--yes. Is he alive?"
"I believe so," said Rhoda, with reluctance.
"Why do you call him conjuror?"
"Well--they say--they used to say he was a--he had powers other folks have not."
The milkwoman had inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the exorcist. They suspected her, then. A short time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common-sense. But she had a haunting reason to be superst.i.tious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.
"The place on my arm is so mysterious! I don"t really believe in such men, but I should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no account must my husband know. Is it far to where he lives?"
"Yes--five miles," said Rhoda backwardly. "In the heart of Egdon."
"Well, I should have to walk. Could not you go with me to show me the way--say tomorrow afternoon?"
"O, not I--that is," the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.
Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally a.s.sented, though with much misgiving. Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her patron"s strange affliction. It was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the spot where they now stood.
_Conjuror Trendle_
Rhoda started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half-an-hour"s brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was. A slight figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there. Rhoda recognized, almost with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.
They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before. It was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath.
Rhoda had a strange dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it.
Conjuror Trendle was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending into his valley. He was a grey-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her. Mrs. Lodge told him her errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he examined her arm.
"Medicine can"t cure it," he said promptly. ""Tis the work of an enemy."
Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.
"An enemy? What enemy?" asked Mrs. Lodge.
He shook his head. "That"s best known to yourself," he said. "If you like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who it is. I can do no more; and don"t wish to do that."
She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood, and took Mrs. Lodge into the room. It opened immediately from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings without taking part in them. He brought a tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the gla.s.s, so that the white went in and the yolk remained. As it was getting gloomy, he took the gla.s.s and its contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch them closely. They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that it a.s.sumed.
"Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?" demanded the conjuror of the young woman.
She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda, and continued to gaze intently into the gla.s.s. Rhoda turned, and walked a few steps away.
When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared exceedingly pale--as pale as Rhoda"s--against the sad dun shades of the upland"s garniture. Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once started homeward together. But Rhoda perceived that her companion had quite changed.
"Did he charge much?" she asked tentatively.
"O no--nothing. He would not take a farthing," said Gertrude.
"And what did you see?" inquired Rhoda.
"Nothing I--care to speak of." The constraint in her manner was remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly suggestive of the face in Rhoda"s bed-chamber.
"Was it you who first proposed coming here?" Mrs. Lodge suddenly inquired, after a long pause. "How very odd, if you did!"
"No. But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered," she replied. For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own.
The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home.
But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge"s gradual loss of the use of her left arm was owing to her being "overlooked" by Rhoda Brook. The latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy disappeared from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.
_A Second Attempt_
Half-a-dozen years pa.s.sed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge"s married experience sank into prosiness, and worse. The farmer was usually gloomy and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years. He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared this might be a judgment from heaven upon him.
"You want somebody to cheer you," he observed. "I once thought of adopting a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I don"t know where."
Gertrude guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook"s story had in the course of years become known to her; though not a word had ever pa.s.sed between her husband and herself on the subject. Neither had she ever spoken to him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man.
She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived. He was ent.i.tled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the gla.s.s had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as she now knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-will. The visit should be paid.
This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and roamed a considerable distance out of her way.
"You can send away warts and other excrescences, I know," she said; "why can"t you send away this?" And the arm was uncovered.
"You think too much of my powers!" said Trendle. "This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off, it will be all at once."
"If I only could!"
"There is only one chance of doing it known to me. It has never failed in kindred afflictions,--that I can declare. But it is hard to carry out, and especially for a woman."
"Tell me!" said she.
"You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who"s been hanged."