XXX
SWEET REVENGE
Whistling over the hilltops and thundering through the valleys, downcame the wind upon the little lonely house by the roadside; and with thewind, driving rain; and they beat together upon the walls of that cornerroom wherein Alice Bristo lay trembling between life and death.
The surgeon from Melmerbridge pronounced it to be brain fever. He hadfound the patient wildly delirious. The case was grave, very grave.Dangerous? There was always danger with an abnormal temperature anddelirium. Dr. Mowbray stayed until evening and ultimately left hispatient sleeping quietly. He promised to return in the early morning.
The doctor stopped, as he was driving off, to shriek something throughthe storm:
"Have you any one who can nurse--among the servants?"
Inquiries were immediately made.
"No," was the answer.
"I'll send over a handy woman from Melmerbridge," said Dr. Mowbray;crack went his whip, and the gig-wheels splashed away through the mud.
A young man standing at the other side of the road, bareheaded andsoaked to the skin, wondered whether the nurse would be sent at oncethat night. Then this young man continued his wild rapid walk up anddown the country road, glancing up every moment at the feeble light thatshone from the casement of that corner room on the upper floor.
Up and down, never pausing nor slackening his speed, fifty paces abovethe house and fifty below it, this unquiet spirit strode to and fro inthe wind and the rain, like Vanderdecken on his storm-proof poop.
Once, when opposite the house, he touched the skirts of a womancrouching under the hedge; but he was not aware of it--he was gazing upat the window--and, before he passed that spot again the woman was gone.
The woman had crept stealthily across the road and through the openwicket. She was crouching behind the opposite hedge, on the roughgrass-plot in front of the house. Once more the swinging steps passedthe house and grew faint in the distance. The crouching woman sprangerect, darted noiselessly up the steps, and grasped the door-handle. Sheturned the handle and pushed gently, the door was neither locked norbolted; it opened. The woman entered, and closed the door softly behindher. She stooped, listening. The footsteps passed the house without apause or a hitch, as before. She had been neither seen nor heard--fromwithout. A horrid smile disfigured the woman's livid face. She stoodupright for an instant, her hand raised to her forehead, pausing inthought.
A lamp was burning low on the table in the passage; its dull lightflickered upon the dark, fierce, resolute face of Elizabeth Ryan.
The dark hair fell in sodden masses about a face livid and distortedwith blind fury, the dark eyes burned like live coals in the dim light,the cast of the firm wide mouth was vindictive, pitiless; the fingers ofthe right hand twitched terribly; once they closed spasmodically upon aloose portion of the ragged dress, and wrung it so hard that the watertrickled down in a stream upon the mat, and at that moment murder waswritten in the writhing face. The left hand was tightly clasped.
Elizabeth Ryan had crept into the chamber of death, in the Blue Bell atMelmerbridge, during the five minutes' absence of the innkeeper. It wasshe who had quitted that room by the window. She had fled wildly overthe moor, maddened by a discovery that scorched up the grief in herheart, setting fire to her brain, changed in a flash from a bewildered,heartbroken, forlorn creature to a ruthless frantic vendetta. Thesubstance of that discovery was hidden in her clasped left hand.
She stood for a brief interval on the mat, then stepped stealthilyforward towards the stairs. A light issued from an open door on theleft, near the foot of the stairs. She peeped in as she passed.Stretched on a couch lay an old white-haired man, dressed as though itwere mid-day instead of mid-night, in a tweed suit. Though asleep, hisface was full of trouble. Nothing in this circumstance, nor in theconduct of the man outside walking to and fro in the storm, nor in thedim lights all over the house at this hour, struck Elizabeth Ryan asextraordinary. Her power of perception was left her; her power ofinference was gone, except in direct relation to the one hideousproject that possessed her soul. She crept softly up the stairs. Theydid not creak. She appreciated their silence, since it furthered herdesign.
As below, a light issued from an open door. She approached this door ontip-toe. A pair of small light shoes, with the morning's dust still uponthem, stood at one side of the mat; someone had mechanically placed themthere. When Elizabeth Ryan saw them her burning eyes dilated, and herlong nervous fingers closed with another convulsive grasp upon the foldsof her skirt.
She crossed the threshold and entered the room. The first thing she saw,in the lowered light of a lamp, was an old, puckered, wrinkled face justappearing over a barrier of eiderdown and shawls, and deep-set in aneasy-chair. The brown, wrinkled eyelids met the brown, furrowed cheeks.The watcher slumbered and slept.
As yet the room wore none of the common trappings of a sick-room: theillness was too young for that. The book the sick girl had been readinglast night lay open, leaves downward, on the chest of drawers; theflowers that she had picked on the way to church, to fasten in herdress, had not yet lost their freshness; the very watch that she hadwound with her own hand last night was still ticking noisily on thetoilet-table. Thus, to one entering the room, there was no warning ofsickness within, unless it was the sight of the queer old sleeping womanin the great chair by the fireside, where a small fire was burning.
The stealthy visitor took two soft, swift, bold steps forward--only tostart back in awe and horror, and press her hand before her eyes. She,Elizabeth Ryan, might do her worst now. She could not undo what had beendone before. She could not kill Death, and Death had forestalled herhere.
A cold dew broke out upon the woman's forehead. She could not move. Shecould only stand still and stare. Her brain was dazed. She could notunderstand, though she saw plainly enough. After a few moments she didunderstand, and her heart sickened as it throbbed. Oh that it would beatits last beat there and then! Oh if only she too might die! Standing, asshe thought, in the presence of death for the second time that night,Elizabeth Ryan lifted her two arms, and prayed that the gracious coldhand might be extended to her also. In the quenching of the fires thathad raged in her brain, in the reawakening of her heart's anguish, thispoor soul besought the Angel of Death not to pass her by, prayingearnestly, pitifully, dumbly, with the gestures of a fanatic.
She lowered her eyes to face for the last time her whom death hadsnatched from vengeance. She started backwards, as she did so, in suddenterror. What was this? The dead girl moved--the dead girl breathed--thecounterpane rose and fell evenly. Had she been mistaken in her firstimpression? Elizabeth Ryan asked herself with chattering teeth. No! Morelikely she was mistaken now. This must be an illusion, like the last;she had been terrified by a like movement in the room at the Blue Bell,and it had proved but a cruel trick of the sight and the imagination;and this was a repetition of the same cruel trick.
No, again! The longer she looked the more distinct grew this movement.It was regular, and it was gentle. Faint yet regular breathing becameaudible. The face on the pillows was flushed. Death had stopped short atMelmerbridge; Death had not travelled so far as this--at least, not yet:there was still a chance for vengeance!
But Elizabeth Ryan had undergone a swift psychological reaction. Thatminute in which she stood, as she believed, for the second time thatnight in the presence of Death--that minute in which her spirit yearnedwith a mighty longing to be stilled, too, for ever--that minute had doneits work. In it the mists of passion had risen from the woman's mind; init the venom had been extracted from her heart. Her eyes, now grown softand dim, roved slowly round the room. They fell curiously upon somethingupon a chair on the far side of the bed--a heap of light hair; theyglanced rapidly to the head on the pillows--it was all but shaved.
Elizabeth Ryan raised her clenched left hand; the hand trembled--thewoman trembled from head to foot. She laid her arms upon the chest ofdrawers, an
d her face upon her arms, and stood there until her tremblingceased. When at last she raised her head, her eyes were swimming, but abright determination shone out through the tears.
She moved cautiously round the foot of the bed and dipped her left handinto the heap of light hair, and for the first time unclasped her hand.The hand was lifted empty, but the heap of Alice's hair remained a heapof her hair still; it had but received its own again.
This strange yet simple act seemed to afford the performer the deepestrelief; she gazed kindly, even tenderly, on the young wan face beforeher, and sighed deeply. Then hastily she retraced her steps to the door.At the door she stopped to throw back a glance of forgiveness andfarewell.
Now it happened that the head of the sleeping girl had slipped upon thepillow, so that its present position made the breathing laboured.
Quick as thought, Mrs. Ryan recrossed the room from the door, and, withher woman's clever light hand, rearranged the pillows beneath theburning head, and smoothed them gently. But in doing this the silenttears fell one after the other upon the coverlet; and when it was donesome sudden impulse brought Elizabeth upon her knees by the bedside, andfrom that bleeding heart there went up a short and humble prayer, ofwhich we have no knowing--at which we can make no guess, since it flewupward without the weight of words.
How cold, how bitter, how piercing were the blast and the driving rainoutside! In the earlier part of the night their edge had not been halfso keen; at all events, it did not cut so deep. Where was a woman toturn on such a night? A woman who had no longer any object in life, nora single friend, nor--if it came to that--a single coin: what was suchan one to do on a night like this?
The picture of the warm, dry bedroom came vividly back to ElizabethRyan; she felt that she would rather lie sick unto death in that roomthan face the wild night without an ailment more serious than a broken,bleeding heart. She looked once back at the dim light in the upperwindow, and then she set her face to Gateby. Before, however, she wasmany paces on her way, quick footsteps approached her--footsteps thatshe seemed to know--and a man's voice hailed her in rapid, excitedtones:
"Are you from Melmerbridge?"
"Yes," she faltered. What else dared she say. It was true, too.
"Then you are the nurse! you are the nurse! I have been waiting for you,looking out for you, all the night, and now you have come; you havewalked through the storm; God bless you for it!"
His voice was tremulous with thanks and joy; yet trouble must haveclouded his mind, too, or he never could have believed in his words.
"I do not understand--" Mrs. Ryan was beginning, but he checked herimpatiently:
"You are the nurse, are you not?" he cried, with sudden fear in hisvoice. "Oh don't--don't tell me I'm mistaken! Speak--yes, speak--forhere we are at the house."
The pause that followed well-nigh drove him frantic. Then came theanswer in a low, clear voice:
"You are not mistaken. I am waiting to be shown into the house."