A Life's Morning
Page 24
Dagworthy was drumming with his fingers on the desk. Not for an instant did he falter in his purpose, but it gave him pleasure to be thus prayed to. The employer of labour is not as a rule troubled with a lively imagination; a pity, for it would surely gratify him to feel in its fulness at times his power of life and death. Native defect and force of habit render it a matter of course that a small population should eat or starve at his pleasure; possibly his resolution in seasons of strike is now and then attributable to awakening of insight and pleasure in prolonging his role of hunger-god. Dagworthy appreciated his victim’s despair all the more that it made present to him the wretchedness that would fall on Emily. Think not that the man was unashamed. With difficulty he could bring himself to meet Hood’s look. But self-contempt may well consist with perseverance in gratification of ignoble instincts.
When Hood ceased, there came this reply.
‘I shall not grant what you ask, simply because it is against my principles. I let you off, for it would do me no good to punish you, and certainly, as regards yourself, the lesson will be enough. But I can’t keep you in my employ, so we’ll talk no more about it. You were going to take your holiday from the end of this week, I think? Very well, let it be supposed that you begin to-day instead, and in a day or two write me a note giving up your place.’
This was not yielding on Dagworthy’s part; it merely occurred to him as a way of protecting himself if there should be future need.
Hood was standing with bent head; he seemed unable either to speak or to depart.
‘You may go,’ Dagworthy said.
‘Sir,—I may refer to you?’ asked the wretched man, roused by the bidding.
‘No, I think not,’ was the calm reply. ‘Unless, of course, you are willing that I should state the plain facts of the case?’
Hood staggered from the room….
When Emily came down in the course of the morning, her appearance was such that her mother uttered an exclamation of alarm.
‘Why, child, you are like a ghost! Why didn’t you stay in bed? I was just coming up to you, hoping you’d been asleep. I must go for Dr. Evans at once.’
Emily resisted.
‘But I certainly shall, say what you like. No headache would make you look like that. And you’re as feverish as you can be. Go up to bed again; you hardly look, though, as if you could climb the stairs. I’ll put on my things and go round.’
It was only by affecting anger that Emily could overcome her mother’s purpose. She did indeed feel ill, but to submit to treatment was impossible whilst this day lasted. Far worse than her bodily fever was the mental anguish which would not allow her to remain in one place for more than a few minutes at a time, and did not suffer the pretence of occupation. How would it come about? Was her father at this moment in the hands of the police? How would the first news come to Banbrigg, and when? The sound of every vehicle on the road was an approaching terror; she was constantly at the window to watch the people who came near. It had seemed to her that she realised what this trial would be, yet her anticipations had fallen far below the experience of these fearful hours. At instants, she all but repented what she had done, and asked herself if there was not even now a chance of somehow saving her father. The face which he had raised to the window as he left home smote her heart. Not a word of kindness had she spoken to him since Friday night. Oh, what inconceivable cruelty had possessed her, that she let him go this morning without even having touched his hand! Could her mind endure this? Was she not now and then near to delirium? Once she went to the window, and, to her horror, could see nothing; a blue and red mist hovered before her eyes. It left her, but other symptoms of physical distress grew from hour to hour, and she dreaded lest strength to endure might wholly forsake her before night came. She tried to picture her father returning as usual; human pity might have spoken even in Dagworthy’s heart; or if not so, then he might have been induced to forbear by a hope of winning her gratitude. Very agony made her feel almost capable of rewarding such mercy. For Wilfrid seemed now very far away, and her love had fallen to the background; it was not the supreme motive of her being as hitherto. Would she suffer thus for Wilfrid? The question forced itself upon her, and for reply she shuddered; such bonds seemed artificial compared with those which linked her to her father, the love which was coeval with her life. All feeling is so relative to circumstances, and what makes so stable as the cement of habit?
In the early hours of the afternoon a lull of utter weariness relieved her; she lay upon the couch and all but slept; it was something between sleep and loss of consciousness following on excessive pain. She awoke to find the doctor bending over her; Mrs. Hood had become so alarmed that she had despatched a neighbour secretly on the errand. Emily was passive, and by her way of speaking half disguised the worst features of her state. Nevertheless, the order was given that she should go to bed. She promised to obey.
‘As soon as father comes,’ she said, when alone again with her mother. ‘It cannot be long till his time.’
She would not yield beyond this. But the hour of return came, and her father delayed. Then was every minute an eternity. No longer able to keep her reclining position, she stood again by the window, and her eyes lost their vision from straining upon one spot, that at which Hood would first appear. She leaned her head upon the window-sill, and let her ears take their turn of watching; the first touch of a hand at the gate would reach her. But there came none.
Can hours thus be lived through? Ah, which of us to whom time has not been a torment of hell? Is there no nether Circle, where dread anticipation eternally prolongs itself, eternally varied with hope in vain for ever?
Mrs. Hood had abandoned her useless protests; she came and sat by the girl.
‘I’ve no doubt he’s gone to the Walkers’,’ she kept saying, naming acquaintances with whom Hood occasionally spent an evening. Then, ‘And why need you wait for him, my dear? Can’t he go up and see you as soon as he gets in?’
‘Mother,’ Emily said at last, ‘will you go to the Walkers’ and ask? It is not really very far. Will you go?’
But, my child, it will take me at least an hour to walk there and back! I should only miss him on the way. Are you afraid of something?
‘Yes, I am. I believe something has happened to him.’
‘Those are your fancies. You are very poorly; it is cruel to me to refuse to go to bed.’
‘Will you go, mother?—If you do not, I must; ill or not, I must go.’
She started to her feet. Her mother gazed at her in fear,—believing it the beginning of delirium.
‘Emily, my dear child,’ she pleaded, laying her hand on the girl’s arm, ‘won’t you come upstairs,—to please me, dear?’
‘Mother, if you will go, I promise to lie here quietly till you return.’
‘But it is impossible to leave you alone in the house. Look, now, it is nine o’clock; in half an hour, an hour at most, your father will be back. Why, you know how often he stays late when he gets talking.’
Emily was silent for a few minutes. Then she said—
‘Will you ask Mrs. Hopkins to send her servant?’
‘But think—the trouble it will be giving.’
‘Will you do it? I wish it. Will you go and ask her I will give the girl money.’
‘If you are so determined, of course I will ask her. But I’m sure—’
At length she left the room, to go out of the house by the back-door and call at the neighbours’. Scarcely was she away, when Emily darted upstairs, and in an instant was down again, with her hat and a cloak; another moment, and she was out in the road. She did not forget the terror her mother would suffer, on finding her gone; but endurance had reached its limit. It was growing dark. After one look in the direction of Dunfield, she took the opposite way, and ran towards the Heath, ran till her breath failed and she had to drop into a quick walk. Once more she was going to the Upper Heath, and to the house which was the source of all her misery. When she reach
ed the quarry it was quite dark at her approach she saw the shape of a man move away into the shadow of the quarried rock, and an unreasoning fear spurred her past the spot. Five minutes more and she was at Dagworthy’s gate. She rang the door-bell.
The servant told her that Mr. Dagworthy was at home; she declined to give her name, but said she must see him at once. Speedily she was led into a room, where her enemy sat alone.
He looked at her wonderingly, then with a deep flush—for now he surely had gained his end,—he advanced towards her without speaking.
‘Where is my father?’ she asked; the voice which disabused him did not seem Emily’s.
‘Isn’t he at home?’
‘He has not come home. What have you done?’
‘Not come home?’
‘Then he is free? He is safe—my father? You have spared him?’
Dagworthy inwardly cursed himself for shortsightedness. Were he but able to answer ‘Yes,’ would she not yield him anything? Why had he not made trial of this policy? Or was it now too late? But Hoed had not returned home. The man had gone forth from him in despair. As he gazed at the girl, a suspicion, all but a fear, touched him. Why should Hood remain away from his house?
She was repeating her questions imploringly.
‘He is free, as far as I am concerned, Emily.’
‘You have forgiven him? Oh, you have had that mercy upon us?’
‘Sit down, and let us talk about it,’ said Dagworthy.
She did not seem to notice that he had taken her hand; but the next moment he was holding her in his arm, and with a cry she broke away.
‘There are others in the house,’ she exclaimed, her wild, fearful eyes seeking other exit than that which he stopped. ‘I must call for their help. Can you not see that I am suffering—ill? Are you pitiless? But no—no—for you have spared him!’
Dagworthy mastered himself, though it cost him something, and spoke with an effort at gentleness.
‘What thanks have you to give me, Emily?’
‘My life’s gratitude—but that will be your least reward.’
‘Ay, but how is the gratitude going to be shown?’
Her keen sense found a fear in his manner of speaking.
‘You have not said a word to him,’ she asked, seeming to forget his question.
Of what ultimate use was it to lie? And she would not suffer him within reach of her.
‘I couldn’t very well help doing that,’ he replied, unable to resolve how it were best to speak, and uttering the first words that came, carelessly.
‘Then he knows you have discovered—’
Her voice failed. Such explanation of her father’s absence was a new terror.
‘Yes, he knows,’ Dagworthy answered, cruelty resuming its fascination. ‘I couldn’t keep him at the mill, you know, though I let him off his punishment.’
‘You dismissed him?’
‘I did. It’s not too late to have him back, and something better.’
‘Let me go!’ she said hoarsely.
He moved from the door; sight of such misery vanquished even him.
When she reached home, her mother was standing with two or three neighbours in front of the house at the sight of Emily there were exclamations of relief and welcome.
‘My child, where can you have been?’ Mrs. Hood cried, following the girl who passed the garden-gate without pausing.
‘Is father come?’ was the reply.
‘No, not yet. But where have you been? Why, you were coming from the Heath, Emily, in the night air, and you so ill!’
‘I have been to ask Mr. Dagworthy,’ Emily said in a tired voice. ‘He knows nothing of him.’
Her strength bore her into the parlour, then she sank upon the couch and closed her eyes. Mrs. Hood summoned the help of her friends. Unresisting, with eyes still closed, silent, she was carried upstairs and laid in her bed. Her mother sat by her. Midnight came, and Hood did not return. Already Mrs. Hood had begun to suspect something mysterious in Emily’s anxiety; her own fears now became active. She went to the front door and stood there with impatience, by turns angry and alarmed. Her husband had never been so late. She returned to the bedroom.
‘Emily, are you awake, dear?’
The girl’s eyes opened, but she did not speak.
‘Do you know any reason why your father should stay away?’
A slight shake of the head was the reply.
The deepest stillness of night was upon the house. As Mrs. Hood seated herself with murmured bewailing of such wretchedness, there sounded a heavy crash out on the staircase; it was followed by a peculiar ringing reverberation. Emily rose with a shriek.
‘My love—hush! hush!’ said her mother. ‘It’s only the clock-weight fallen. How that does shake my nerves! It did it only last week, and gave me such a start.’
Grasping her mother’s hand, the girl lay back, death-pale. The silence was deeper than before, for not even the clock ticked….
Dagworthy could not sleep. At sunrise he had wearied himself so with vain efforts to lie still, that he resolved to take a turn across the Heath, and then rest if he felt able to. He rose and went into the still morning air.
The Heath was beautiful, seen thus in the purple flush of the dawn. He had called forth a dog to accompany him, and the animal careered in great circles over the dewy sward, barking at the birds it started up, leaping high from the ground, mad with the joy of life. He ran a race with it to the wall which bounded the top of the quarry. The exercise did him good, driving from his mind shadows which had clung about it in the night. Beaching the wall he rested his arms upon it, and looked over Dunfield to the glory of the rising sun. The smoke of the mill-chimneys, thickening as fires were coaled for the day’s work, caught delicate reflection from the sky; the lofty spire of the church seemed built of some beautiful rose-hued stone. The grassy country round about wore a fresher green than it was wont to show; the very river, so foul in reality with the refuse of manufactures, gleamed like a pure current.
Dagworthy’s eyes fixed themselves on the horizon, and grew wide with the sense of things half understood.
The dog had left him and was gone round into the quarry. A bark came from below. At a second bark Dagworthy looked down. The dog was snuffing at a man who lay between a big piece of quarried stone and a little grass-bordered pool. Asleep—was he? Yet it was not the attitude in which men sleep. The dog barked a third time.
He left his position, and followed the circuit which would bring him down to where the man lay. Whilst still a few yards off, he checked himself. If the man slept, his body was strangely distorted; one arm seemed to be beneath him, the other was extended stiffly; the face looked at the sky. A few steps, and Dagworthy, gazing upon the face, knew it.
A cold shudder thrilled him, and he drew back. His foot struck against something; it was a bottle. He picked it up, and read a word in large print on the white label.
The temptation to look full into the face again was irresistible, though horror shook him as he approached. The features were hideous, the eyes starting from their sockets, the lips drawn back over the teeth. He turned and walked away rapidly, followed by the dog, which roused the quarry echoes with its barking.
‘My God! I never thought of that.’
The words uttered themselves as he speeded on. Only at the garden-gate he stayed, and then seemed to reflect upon what he should do. The temptation was to return into the house and leave others to spread the news; there would be workmen in the quarry in less than an hour. Yet he did not do this, but hurried past his own door to the house of a doctor not a hundred yards away. Him he called forth….
About midday a covered burden was brought in a cart to Banbrigg; the cart stopped before the Hoods’ house, and two men, lifting the burden, carried it through the gate and to the door. Mrs. Hood had already opened to them, and stood with her face half-hidden. The burden was taken into the parlour, and placed upon the couch. The outline was that of a man’s form.
‘I shan’t dare to look at him!’ Mrs. Hood whispered. ‘The doctor told me I wasn’t to. Oh, my husband!’
With the sublime love of woman, conquering all dread, she dropped to her knees and laid her head on the pillow of the couch by the side of that head so closely shrouded.
‘Thank God, Emily can’t see this!’ she groaned.
‘Hadn’t I better go up to her?’ one of the women asked. Both of them stood at a distance.
‘Yes, perhaps you had. But you’ll be wanted at home. Stay with me a minute, then I’ll lock this door and go up myself.’
At the sound of a hand on the door all turned with a movement of surprise and affright. There entered Emily, hurriedly dressed, her hair loose upon her shoulders. She looked round the room, with half-conscious, pitiful gaze, then upon her mother, then at the form on the couch. She pointed to it.
‘He has come?’
Her voice was unearthly. The sound gave her mother strength to run to her, and throw her arms about her, sobbing, terror-stricken.
She suffered herself to be led upstairs, and did not speak.
CHAPTER XIV
NEWS AND COMMENTS
As a man who took the world as he found it, and on the whole found it well worth accepting on such terms, Mr. Athel was not likely to allow his annoyance with Wilfrid to threaten the habitual excellence of his digestion. His disappointment was real enough. When of a sudden Wilfrid had announced that he could not accompany the family party to Switzerland, Mr. Athel was saved from undignified irresolution by a hearty outburst of temper, which saw him well over the Straits before it gave way to the natural reaction, under the influence of which he called himself a blockhead. He had, beyond a doubt, precipitated the marriage, when postponement was the only thing he really cared about. To abuse himself was one thing, the privilege which an Englishman is ready enough to exercise; to have his thoughts uttered to him by his sister with feminine neatness and candour was quite another matter. Mrs. Rossall had in vain attempted to stem the flood of wrath rushing Channelwards. Overcome, she clad herself in meaning silence, until her brother, too ingenuous man, was compelled to return to the subject himself, and, towards the end of the journey, rashly gave utterance to half a wish that he had not left ‘that young fool’ behind. Mrs. Rossall, herself a little too impetuous when triumph was no longer doubtful, made such pointed remarks on the neglect of good advice that the ire which was cooling shot forth flame in another direction. Brother and sister arrived at Geneva in something less than perfect amity. Their real affection for each other was quite capable of bearing not infrequently the strain of irritability on both sides. A day of mutual causticities had well prepared the ground for the return of good temper, when the arrival of Wilfrid, by astonishing both, hastened their complete reconciliation. Wilfrid was mysterious; for a week he kept his counsel, and behaved as if nothing unusual had happened. By that time Mr. Athel’s patience had reached its limit; he requested to be told how matters stood. Wilfrid, determined not to compromise his dignity by speaking first, but glad enough when his father broached the topic, related the story of his visit to Dunfield. Possibly he laid needless emphasis on Emily’s unselfish prudence.