For about two days this discovery of my power, under favourable circ.u.mstances, to make sixty or seventy pounds a year, actually cheered me; but this healthier effect was of short duration. The miseries of our situation were too obvious and formidable to be long kept out of view.
Gloom and distraction soon returned--the same rebellious violence inflamed by the fresh alarm of mamma"s returning illness.
She was very ill again the night but one after the good news about my translation--breathless, palpitating. I began to grow frightened and desponding about her. I had fancied before that her symptoms were mere indications of her state of mind; but now, when her mind seemed more tranquil, and her nerves quiet, their return was ominous. I was urging her to see Sir Jacob Lake, when Mr. Forrester called, and I went to our drawing-room to see him. He had got a note, cold and petulant, from my uncle, Lord Ch.e.l.lwood, that morning. This letter said that "no person who knew of the number and magnitude of the charges affecting his property could be so unreasonable as to suppose that he could, even if he had the power, which was not quite so clear, think of charging an annuity upon it, however small, for the benefit of any one." That "he deeply commiserated the distressing circ.u.mstances in which poor Frank"s widow found herself; but surely he, Lord Ch.e.l.lwood, was not to blame for it. He had never lost an opportunity of pressing upon his brother the obligation he conceived every married man to be under, to make provision for his wife; and had been at the trouble to show him, by some very pertinent figures, how impracticable it was for him to add to the burdens that weighed on the estates, and how totally he, Lord Ch.e.l.lwood, was without the power of mitigating to any extent the consequences of his rashness, if he should leave his wife without a suitable provision."
So it went on; and ended by saying that "he might possibly be able, next spring, to make--it could be but a small one--a present to the poor lady, who had certainly much to answer for in the imprudent career in which she had contributed to engage her husband, and during which she had wilfully sacrificed her settlement to the pleasures and vanities of an expensive and unsuitable life." The letter went on in this strain, and hinted that the present he spoke of could not exceed a hundred and fifty pounds, and could not possibly be repeated.
"This looks very black, you see," said the good-natured solicitor. "But I hope it may not be quite so bad as he says. If he could be got to do a little more, a small annuity might be purchased."
I did not like my uncle. It is very hard to get over first impressions, and the repulsion of an entirely uncongenial countenance. There was nothing manly in his face--it was narrow, selfish, conceited. He was pale as wax. He had manners at once dry and languid; and whether it was in his eye or not, I can"t say, but there was something in his look, though he smiled as much as was called for, and never said a disagreeable thing, that conveyed very clearly to me, although neither papa nor mamma seemed to perceive it, that he positively disliked us, each and every one, not even excepting poor, gay, good-natured papa. We all knew he was stingy; he had one hobby, and that was the nursing and rehabilitation of the estates which had come to him, with the t.i.tle, in a very crippled state.
With these feelings, and the pride which is strongest in youth, I fancied that I should have died rather than have submitted to the humiliation of accepting, much less asking, money from his hand.
I must carry you three weeks further on. It was dark; I can"t tell you now what o"clock it was; I am sure it was not much earlier than nine. I had my cloak and bonnet on; Rebecca Torkill was at my side, and her thin hand was upon my arm.
"And where are you going, my darling, at this time of night?" she said, looking frightened into my face.
"To see Lord Ch.e.l.lwood; to see papa"s unnatural brother; to tell him that mamma must die unless he helps her."
"But, my child, this is no time--you would not go out through them wicked streets at this hour--you shan"t go!" she said st.u.r.dily, taking a firm hold of my arm.
I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her grasp angrily, and walked quickly away. I looked over my shoulder, as I reached the two piers, and saw the figure of old Rebecca looking black in the doorway, with a background of misty light from the candle at the foot of the stairs. I think she was wavering between the risk of leaving the house and mamma only half protected, and the urgent necessity of pursuing and bringing me back. I was out of her reach, however, before she could make up her mind.
I was walking as quickly as I could through the streets that led towards Regent Street. I had studied them on the map.
These out-of-the-way streets were quiet now, but not deserted; now and then I pa.s.sed the blaze of a gin-palace. It was a strange fear and excitement to me to be walking through these poor by-streets by gas-light. No fugitive threading the streets of a town in the throes of revolution had a keener sense of danger, or moved with eye and sinew more ready every moment to start from a walk into a run. I suppose they allow poor people, such as I might well be taken for, walking quickly upon their business, to pa.s.s undisturbed. I was not molested.
At length I was in Regent Street. I felt safe now; the broad pavement, the stream of traffic, the long line of gas-lamps, and the still open shops, enabled me, without fear, a little to slacken my pace. I required this relief. I had been ill for two days, and was worse. I felt chilly and aguish; I was suffering from one of those stupendous headaches which possibly give the sufferer some idea of the action of that iron "cap of silence" with which, during the reign of good King Bomba, so many Neapolitan citizens were made acquainted. I can afford to speak lightly of it now; but I was very ill. I ought to have been in my bed. Nothing but my tremor about mamma would have given me nerve and strength for this excursion.
She had that day had a sudden return of the breathlessness and palpitation from which she had suffered so much, and I had succeeded in getting Sir Jacob Lake to come to see her.
It was a hurried visit, as his visits always were. He saw her, gave some general directions, wrote a prescription, spoke cheerfully to her, and his manner seemed to say he apprehended nothing. I came with him to the stairs, which we went down together, and in the drawing-room I heard the astounding words that told me mamma could not live many months, and might be carried off at any moment in one of those attacks. He told me to get her to the country, her native air, if that could be managed, immediately. That might prolong her life a little. It was only a chance, and at best a reprieve. But without it he could not answer for a week.
He told me that I must be careful not to let mamma know that he thought her in danger. She was in a critical state, and any agitation might be fatal. He took his leave, and I was alone with his dreadful words in my ears.
Now, how was I to carry out his directions? The journey to Golden Friars, as he planned it, would cost us at least twenty pounds, and he ordered claret, then a very expensive wine, for mamma. He did not know that he was carrying away our last guinea in his pocket. I had but half a sovereign and a few shillings in my purse. Mr. Forrester was out of town; and even if he were within reach, it was scarcely likely that he would lend or bestow anything like the sum required. The work was not sufficiently advanced to justify a hope that he would give me, a stranger, a sum of money on account of a task which I might never complete. Poverty had come in its direst shape. In the distraction of that dreadful helplessness my pride broke down. This was the reason of my wild excursion.
As I now walked at a more moderate pace, I felt the effect of my unnatural exertion more painfully--every pulse was a throb of torture.
It was an effort to keep my mind clear, and to banish perpetually rising confusions, the incipient exhalations of fever. What drowsiness is to the system in health, this tendency to drop into delirium is to the sick.
I found myself, at length, almost exhausted, at my n.o.ble kinsman"s door.
I knocked; I asked to see him. The footman did not recognise me. He simply said, looking across the street over my head, with a careless disdain:
"I say, what"s the row, miss?"
Certainly such a visitor as I, and at such an hour, had no very recognisable claim to a ceremonious reception.
"Charles," I said, "don"t you know me?--Miss Ware."
The man started a little, looked hard at me, drew himself up formally, as he made his salutation, receding a step, with the hall-door open in his hand.
"Is his lordship at home?" I asked.
"No, miss, he dined out to-day."
"But I must see him, Charles. If he knew it was I he could not refuse.
Tell him mamma is dangerously ill, and I have no one to help me."
"He is out, miss; and he sleeps out of town--at Colonel Anson"s to-night."
I uttered an exclamation of despair.
"And when is he to return?"
"He will not be in town again for a fortnight, miss; he"s going to Harleigh Castle."
I stood on the steps for a minute, stunned by the disappointment, staring helplessly into the man"s face.
"Please, shall I call a cab, miss?"
"No--no," I said dreamily. I turned and went away quickly. It troubled me little what the servants might say or think of my strange visit.
This blow was distracting. The doctor had distinctly said that mamma"s immediate removal to country air was a necessity.
As people will under excitement, I was walking at the swiftest pace I could. I was pacing under the evergreens of the neighbouring square, back and forward, again and again; I saw young ladies get from a house opposite into a carriage, and drive away, as I once used to do. I hated them--I hated every one who was as fortunate as I once was. I hated the houses on the other side with their well-lighted halls. I hated even the great prosperous shop-keeping cla.s.s, with their overgrown persons and purses. Why did not fortune take other people, the purse-proud, the scheming, the vicious, the arrogant, the avaricious, instead of us--drag them from their places, and batter and trundle them in the gutter? Here was I, for no fault--none, none!--reduced to a worse plight than a beggar"s. The beggar has been brought up to his calling, and can make something of it; while I could not set about it, had not even that form of pluck which people call meanness, and was quite past the age at which the art is to be learned.
All this time I was growing more and more ill. The breathless walking and the angry agitation were precipitating the fever that was already upon me. I had an increasing horror of the dismal abode which was now my home. Distraction like mine demands rapid locomotion as its proper and only anodyne. Despair and quietude quickly subside into madness.
Some public clock not far off struck the hour; I did not count it; but it reminded me suddenly of the risk of exciting alarm at home by delaying my return. So with an effort, and as it were an awakening, I began to direct my steps homewards. But before I reached that melancholy goal, an astounding adventure was fated to befall me.
CHAPTER XLIII.
COLD STEEL.
I am quite certain now that the impious sophistries to which some proud minds in affliction abandon themselves, are the direful suggestions of intelligences immensely superior in power to themselves. When they call to us in the air we listen; when they knock at the door we go down and open to them; we take them in to sup with us, we make them our guests, they become sojourners in the house, and are about our paths, and about our beds, and spying out all our ways; their thoughts become our thoughts, their wickedness our wickedness, their purposes our purposes, till, without perceiving it, we are their slaves. And then when a fit opportunity presents itself, they make, in Doctor Johnson"s phrase, "a s.n.a.t.c.h of us." Something like this was near happening to me. You shall hear.
I grew, on a sudden, faint and cold; a horror of returning home stole over me. I could not go home, and yet I had no other choice but death. I had scarcely thought of death, when a longing seized me. Death grew so beautiful in my eyes! The false smile, the mysterious welcome, the sweep of deep waters, the vague allurement of a profound endless welcome, drew me on and on.
Two men chatting pa.s.sed me by as one said to the other, "The tide"s full in at Waterloo Bridge now; the moon must look quite lovely there." It was spoken in harmony with my thoughts. I had read in my happier days in the papers how poor girls had ended their misery by climbing over the bal.u.s.trade of Waterloo Bridge, over the black abyss, dotted with the reflected lamps, and stepping off it into the dark air into death. I was going now to that bridge--people would direct me--by the time I reached it the thoroughfare would be still and deserted enough. I can"t say I had determined upon this--I can"t say I ever thought about it--it was only that the scene and the event had taken possession of me, with the longing of a child for its home.
The streets were quieter now; but some shops were still open. Among these was a jeweller"s. The shutters were up, and only the door open. I stepped in, I don"t in the least know why. The fever, I suppose, had touched my brain. There were only three men in the shop--one behind the counter, a smiling, ceremonious man, whom I believe to have been the owner--the two others were customers. One was a young man, sitting on a chair with his elbow on the counter, examining and turning over some jewellery that glittered in a little heap on the counter. The other, older and dressed in black, was leaning over the counter, with his back to me, and discussing, in low, careless tones, the merits of a dagger, which, from their talk, not distinctly heard, I conjectured the young man had been recommending as a specific against garotters. I was in no condition to comprehend or care for the debate. The elder man, as he talked, sometimes laid the little weapon down upon the counter, and sometimes took it up, fitting it in his hand.
The intense light of the gas striking on my eyes made them ache acutely.
I don"t know why, or how, I entered the shop; I only know that I found myself standing within the door in a blaze of gaslight.