her frightful warning, and told her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling, which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful situation. I was stupid — the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as we sometimes see horrors — heads cut off and houses burnt — in a dream, and without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to the side of my head and saying —
“Oh, it won’t be — it won’t be — Oh no! — never! — it could not be!” And in this stunned state Madame found me on her return.
But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The “horror of great darkness” is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights. There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found it — agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the ordeal.
Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch; it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four o’clock, it said. Four o’clock! It would be dark at five — night in one hour!
“Madame, what o’clock is it? Is it evening?” I cried with my hand to my forehead, like a person puzzled.
“Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came upstairs,” answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window.
“Oh, Madame! Madame! I’m frightened,” cried I, with a wild and piteous voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and shaking her arm loose —
“What do you mean, cheaile?”
“Oh save me, Madame! — oh save me! — oh save me, Madame!” I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.
“Save a you, indeed! Save! What niaiserie!”
“Oh, Madame! Oh, dear Madame! for God’s sake, only get me away — get me away from this, and I’ll do everything you ask me all my life — I will — indeed, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! save me!”
I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.
“And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?” demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witch-like stare.
“I am, Madame — I am — in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me — take pity on me! I have none to help me — there is no one but God and you!”
Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face.
“Well, maybe you are — how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad — maybe you are mad. You have been my enemy always — why should I care?”
Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death.
“I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue — petite traitresse! Reflect, if you can, how you ‘av always treat Madame. You ‘av attempt to ruin me — you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy me — and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to me — you ‘ad no mercy for me — you join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? Bah!”
This terrific “Bah!” with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder.
“I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the hound — more than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care — I ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely.”
Chapter 63.
Spiced Claret
I DID NOT lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heave. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets.
The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picture — the same motion without progress — the same dreadful suspense and impatience.
I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first one than another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage moods — sometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth.
She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.
I had not moved since she left my room.
She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wild-beast stare.
“You are a very secrete family, you Ruthyns — you are som coning. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away to-night. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis.”
Madame’s words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg’s journey was already frustrated; she was not to reach Elverston in time.
Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for me.
It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering.
I was listening for signals of deliverance. At every distant sound, half stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with