"I must go there and see her at once," said Mr. Berners, seizing his hat and hurrying from the house.
He walked rapidly through the kitchen garden, vineyard, orchard, and meadow, to the edge of the wood where the overseer"s cottage stood.
He found old Mrs. Winterose with her hands full.
Mr. Winterose, who three days before had had a paralytic stroke, that had nearly brought him to the grave, had now so far rallied as to give hopes of his continued life.
He lay sleeping on a neat white bed in the lower front room of the cottage. His wife was the only person with him.
She came forward in great haste to meet Mr. Berners.
"Oh, sir!" she cried, "my child, Miss Sybil! was she reskeed?"
"Ah, Heaven! That is the very question I came to ask you, or rather to ask Tabby," sighed Mr. Berners, dropping into a chair.
"Oh, sir! Oh, sir!" wept the old nurse, "then I can"t give you any more satisfaction than you can give me! Tabby don"t know nothink! She"s in bed up stairs, in a fever, and outen her mind, and Libby is a watching of her."
"Does she talk in her delirium?"
"Talk? Law, sir, she don"t do nothink else at all! Her tongue goes like a mill-clapper all the time!"
"Let me go and see her. Perhaps by her rambling talk I may gain some clue to my poor wife"s fate."
"I"m "fraid you won"t, sir. _I_ an"t been able to yet. But you"re welcome to come up and see her if you will," said the old woman, rising and leading the way to a neat room overhead, where Miss Tabby lay in bed, babbling at random.
Miss Libby, who was sitting beside her, got up and courtesied, and made way for Mr. Berners, who came forward and bent over the sick woman, spoke to her kindly, and inquired how she felt.
But the old maid, who was quite delirious, took him for the sweetheart of her young days, and called him "Jim," and asked him how he dared to have the "impidince" to come into a young lady"s room before she was up in the morning, and she requested Suzy--a sister who had long been dead--to turn him out directly.
But though Mr. Berners sat by her and succeeded in soothing her, he gained no information from her. She babbled of everything under the sun but the one subject to which he wished to lead her thoughts.
At length, in despair, Mr. Berners arose to depart.
"Where does that quarryman live who picked her up and brought her home?"
"Up at the quarries, sir, to be sure."
"But there are fifty cottages up there, scattered over the s.p.a.ce of miles."
"Well, sir, it is in the whitish stone one, the nighest but three to the big oak, you know; which his name it is Norriss, as you can find him by that. But, law, sir! he can"t tell you no more nor I have," said Mrs.
Winterose.
Before she quite finished her speech Mr. Berners ran down stairs and out of the cottage, and bent his steps to the quarryman"s hut.
It happened just as the old nurse had foretold.
The man could tell Mr. Berners nothing but this: that Miss Tabby had come to his house just about daylight, having her clothing wet and draggled nearly up to her waist with mud and water, and shaking as with an ague, and sinking with fatigue.
He having neither wife nor daughter, nor any other woman about the house, had no proper dry clothes to offer her; but he made her sit by the fire, while he questioned her as to the manner in which she came to be so much exposed.
She answered him only by senseless lamentations and floods of tears.
When her chill had gone off a high fever came on, and, the quarryman explained, he knew that she was going to be ill, so he offered to take her home; and, partly by leading, and partly by lugging, he had contrived to carry her safe to her father"s cottage, which she reached in a state of fever and delirium.
This was all the information that Mr. Berners could get from the honest quarryman, who would willingly have given him more had he possessed it.
Lyon Berners went back to Black Hall, where he found Clement and Beatrix Pendleton waiting for him in the parlor, and wondering at his prolonged absence.
He apologized for having left them for so many hours, and explained the business that had called him so suddenly away, giving them the startling intelligence of Miss Tabby"s unaccountable safety; which, he added, left the fate of his beloved wife in greater uncertainty than they had supposed it to be. She was _probably_ drowned, but _possibly_ rescued.
He could not tell. He and they must wait patiently the issue of events.
Wait patiently? Twice more that day he walked up to the overseer"s cottage to find out whether Miss Tabby"s fever had gone off and she had come to her senses, and he came back disappointed. And again, very late at night, he walked up there and startled the watcher by the sick-bed with the same question so often repeated:
"Has she come to her senses yet?"
"No; she is more stupider than ever, I think," was Miss Libby"s answer.
"What does your mother think is the matter with her, then?"
"Oh, nothing but chills and fevers. Only Tabby has a weak head, and always loses of it when she has a fever."
"Well, Miss Libby, as soon as she comes to herself, if it is in the dead of night, send some one over to the Hall to let me know, that I may come immediately; for my anxiety to ascertain my wife"s fate, which she only can tell, is really insupportable."
Miss Libby promised to obey his directions, and Lyon Berners returned to Black Hall.
But not that night, nor for many nights after that, did Miss Tabby come to her senses. Her illness proved to be a low type of typhoid fever, not primarily caused, but only hastened by the depressing influences of fear and cold from her exposure to death, and to the elements, on the night of the great flood.
For many weary weeks she lay on her bed, too low to answer or even understand a question.
And during all this time nothing occurred to throw the faintest gleam of light upon the deep darkness that still enveloped the fate of Sybil Berners.
This period of almost insupportable anxiety was pa.s.sed by Mr. Berners in doing all that was possible to repair the damage done by the disastrous flood.
He was the largest subscriber to, and also the treasurer of the fund raised for the relief of the victims, and pa.s.sed much time in receiving and disbursing money on their account.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE VICTIMS.
And each will mourn his own, (she saith,) But sweeter woman ne"er drew breath Than that young wife.--JEAN INGLELOW.
The Great Black Valley Flood, as it came to be called, had occurred on Hallow Eve.
Before Christmas Eve many of its ravages had been repaired.