Page 70 of Man and Wife

or the husband more.

  "I went up the street--and came back. I went down the street--and

  came back. I tried it a third time, and went round and round and

  round--and came back. It was not to be done The house held me

  chained to it like a dog to his kennel. I couldn't keep away from

  it. For the life of me, I couldn't keep away from it.

  "A company of gay young men and women passed me, just as I was

  going to let myself in again. They were in a great hurry. 'Step

  out,' says one of the men; 'the theatre's close by, and we shall

  be just in time for the farce.' I turned about and followed them.

  Having been piously brought up, I had never been inside a theatre

  in my life. It struck me that I might get taken, as it were, out

  of myself, if I saw something that was quite strange to me, and

  heard something which would put new thoughts into my mind.

  "They went in to the pit; and I went in after them.

  "The thing they called the farce had begun. Men and women came on

  to the stage, turn and turn about, and talked, and went off

  again. Before long all the people about me in the pit were

  laughing and clapping their hands. The noise they made angered

  me. I don't know how to describe the state I was in. My eyes

  wouldn't serve me, and my ears wouldn't serve me, to see and to

  hear what the rest of them were seeing and hearing. There must

  have been something, I fancy, in my mind that got itself between

  me and what was going on upon the stage. The play looked fair

  enough on the surface; but there was danger and death at the

  bottom of it. The players were talking and laughing to deceive

  the people--with murder in their minds all the time. And nobody

  knew it but me--and my tongue was tied when I tried to tell the

  others. I got up, and ran out. The moment I was in the street my

  steps turned back of themselves on the way to the house. I called

  a cab, and told the man to drive (as far as a shilling would take

  me) the opposite way. He put me down--I don't know where. Across

  the street I saw an inscription in letters of flame over an open

  door. The man said it was a dancing-place. Dancing was as new to

  me as play-going. I had one more shilling left; and I paid to go

  in, and see what a sight of the dancing would do for me. The

  light from the ceiling poured down in this place as if it was all

  on fire. The crashing of the music was dreadful. The whirling

  round and round of men and women in each other's arms was quite

  maddening to see. I don't know what happened to me here. The

  great blaze of light from the ceiling turned blood-red on a

  sudden. The man standing in front of the musicians waving a stick

  took the likeness of Satan, as seen in the picture in our family

  Bible at home. The whirling men and women went round and round,

  with white faces like the faces of the dead, and bodies robed in

  winding-sheets. I screamed out with the terror of it; and some

  person took me by the arm and put me outside the door. The

  darkness did me good: it was comforting and delicious--like a

  cool hand laid on a hot head. I went walking on through it,

  without knowing where; composing my mind with the belief that I

  had lost my way, and that I should find myself miles distant from

  home when morning dawned. After some time I got too weary to go

  on; and I sat me down to rest on a door-step. I dozed a bit, and

  woke up. When I got on my feet to go on again, I happened to turn

  my head toward the door of the house. The number on it was the

  same number an as ours. I looked again. And behold, it was our

  steps I had been resting on. The door was our door.

  "All my doubts and all my struggles dropped out of my mind when I

  made that discovery. There was no mistaking what this perpetual

  coming back to the house meant. Resist it as I might, it was to

  be.

  "I opened the street door and went up stairs, and heard him

  sleeping his heavy sleep, exactly as I had heard him when I went

  out. I sat down on my bed and took off my bonnet, quite quiet in

  myself, because I knew it was to be. I damped the towel, and put

  it ready, and took a turn in the room.

  "It was just the dawn of day. The sparrows were chirping among

  the trees in the square hard by.

  "I drew up my blind; the faint light spoke to me as if in words,

  'Do it now, before I get brighter, and show too much.'

  "I listened. The friendly silence had a word for me too: 'Do it

  now, and trust the secret to Me.'

  "I waited till the church clock chimed before striking the hour.

  At the first stroke--without touching the lock of his door,

  without setting foot in his room--I had the towel over his face.

  Before the last stroke he had ceased struggling. When the hum of

  the bell through the morning silence was still and dead, _he_ was

  still and dead with it.

  11.

  "The rest of this history is counted in my mind by four

  days--Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. After that it all

  fades off like, and the new years come with a strange look, being

  the years of a new life.

  "What about the old life first? What did I feel, in the horrid

  quiet of the morning, when I had done it?

  "I don't know what I felt. I can't remember it, or I can't tell

  it, I don't know which. I can write the history of the four days,

  and that's all.

  "Wednesday.--I gave the alarm toward noon. Hours before, I had

  put things straight and fit to be seen. I had only to call for

  help, and to leave the people to do as they pleased. The

  neighbors came in, and then the police. They knocked, uselessly,

  at his door. Then they broke it open, and found him dead in his

  bed.

  "Not the ghost of a suspicion of me entered the mind of any one.

  There was no fear of human justice finding me out: my one

  unutterable dread was dread of an Avenging Providence.

  I had a short sleep that night, and a dream, in which I did the

  deed over again. For a time my mind was busy with thoughts of

  confessing to the police, and of giving myself up. If I had not

  belonged to a respectable family, I should have done it. From

  generation to generation there had been no stain on our good

  name. It would be death to my father, and disgrace to all my

  family, if I owned what I had done, and suffered for it on the

  public scaffold. I prayed to be guided; and I had a revelation,

  toward morning, of what to do.

  "I was commanded, in a vision, to open the Bible, and vow on it

  to set my guilty self apart among my innocent fellow-creatures

  from that day forth; to live among them a separate and silent

  life, to dedicate the use of my speech to the language of prayer

  only, offered up in the solitude of my own chamber when no human

  ear could hear me. Alone, in the morning, I saw the vision, and

  vowed the vow. No human ear _has_ heard me from that time. No

  human ear _will_ hear me, to the day of my death.

  "Thursday.--The people came to speak to me, as usual. They found

  me dumb.

  "What had happened to me in the
past, when my head had been hurt,

  and my speech affected by it, gave a likelier look to my dumbness

  than it might have borne in the case of another person. They took

  me back again to the hospital. The doctors were divided in

  opinion. Some said the shock of what had taken place in the

  house, coming on the back of the other shock, might, for all they

  knew, have done the mischief. And others said, 'She got her

  speech again after the accident; there has been no new injury

  since that time; the woman is shamming dumb, for some purpose of

  her own.' I let them dispute it as they liked. All human talk was

  nothing now to me. I had set myself apart among my

  fellow-creatures; I had begun my separate and silent life.

  "Through all this time the sense of a coming punishment hanging

  over me never left my mind. I had nothing to dread from human

  justice. The judgment of an Avenging Providence--there was what I

  was waiting for.

  "Friday--They held the inquest. He had been known for years past

  as an inveterate drunkard, he had been seen overnight going home

  in liquor; he had been found locked up in his room, with the key

  inside the door, and the latch of the window bolted also. No

  fire-place was in this garret; nothing was disturbed or altered:

  nobody by human possibility could have got in. The doctor

  reported that he had died of congestion of the lungs; and the

  jury gave their verdict accordingly.

  12.

  "Saturday.--Marked forever in my calendar as the memorable day on

  which the judgment descended on me. Toward three o'clock in the

  afternoon--in the broad sunlight, under the cloudless sky, with

  hundreds of innocent human creatures all around me--I, Hester

  Dethridge, saw, for the first time, the Appearance which is

  appointed to haunt me for the rest of my life.

  "I had had a terrible night. My mind felt much as it had felt on

  the evening when I had gone to the play. I went out to see what

  the air and the sunshine and the cool green of trees and grass

  would do for me. The nearest place in which I could find what I

  wanted was the Regent's Park. I went into one of the quiet walks

  in the middle of the park, where the horses and carriages are not

  allowed to go, and where old people can sun themselves, and

  children play, without danger.

  "I sat me down to rest on a bench. Among the children near me was

  a beautiful little boy, playing with a brand-new toy--a horse and

  wagon. While I was watching him busily plucking up the blades of

  grass and loading his wagon with them, I felt for the first

  time--what I have often and often felt since--a creeping chill

  come slowly over my flesh, and then a suspicion of something

  hidden near me, which would steal out and show itself if I looked

  that way.

  "There was a big tree hard by. I looked toward the tree, and

  waited to see the something hidden appear from behind it.

  "The Thing stole out, dark and shadowy in the pleasant sunlight.

  At first I saw only the dim figure of a woman. After a little it

  began to get plainer, brightening from within

  outward--brightening, brightening, brightening, till it set

  before me the vision of MY OWN SELF, repeated as if I was

  standing before a glass--the double of myself, looking at me with

  my own eyes. I saw it move over the grass. I saw it stop behind

  the beautiful little boy. I saw it stand and listen, as I had

  stood and listened at the dawn of morning, for the chiming of the

  bell before the clock struck the hour. When it heard the stroke

  it pointed down to the boy with my own hand; and it said to me,

  with my own voice, 'Kill him.'

  "A time passed. I don't know whether it was a minute or an hour.

  The heavens and the earth disappeared from before me. I saw

  nothing but the double of myself, with the pointing hand. I felt

  nothing but the longing to kill the boy.

  "Then, as it seemed, the heavens and the earth rushed back upon

  me. I saw the people near staring in surprise at me, and

  wondering if I was in my right mind.

  "I got, by main force, to my feet; I looked, by main force, away

  from the beautiful boy; I escaped, by main force, from the sight

  of the Thing, back into the streets. I can only describe the

  overpowering strength of the temptation that tried me in one way.

  It was like tearing the life out of me to tear myself from

  killing the boy. And what it was on this occasion it has been

  ever since. No remedy against it but in that torturing effort,

  and no quenching the after-agony but by solitude and prayer.

  "The sense of a coming punishment had hung over me. And the

  punishment had come. I had waited for the judgment of an Avenging

  Providence. And the judgment was pronounced. With pious David I

  could now say, Thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy terrors have

  cut me off."

  --------

  Arrived at that point in the narrative, Geoffrey looked up from

  the manuscript for the first time. Some sound outside the room

  had disturbed him. Was it a sound in the passage?

  He listened. There was an interval of silence. He looked back

  again at the Confession, turning over the last leaves to count

  how much was left of it before it came to an end.

  After relating the circumstances under which the writer had

  returned to domestic service, the narrative was resumed no more.

  Its few remaining pages were occupied by a fragmentary journal.

  The brief entries referred to the various occasions on which

  Hester Dethridge had again and again seen the terrible apparition

  of herself, and had again and again resisted the homicidal frenzy

  roused in her by the hideous creation of her own distempered

  brain. In the effort which that resistance cost her lay the

  secret of her obstinate determination to insist on being freed

  from her work at certain times, and to make it a condition with

  any mistress who employed her that she should be privileged to

  sleep in a room of her own at night. Having counted the pages

  thus filled, Geoffrey turned back to the place at which he had

  left off, to read the manuscript through to the end.

  As his eyes rested on the first line the noise in the

  passage--intermitted for a moment only--disturbed him again.

  This time there was no doubt of what the sound implied. He heard

  her hurried footsteps; he heard her dreadful cry. Hester

  Dethridge had woke in her chair in the pallor, and had discovered

  that the Confession was no longer in her own hands.

  He put the manuscript into the breast-pocket of his coat. On

  _this_ occasion his reading had been of some use to him. Needless

  to go on further with it. Needless to return to the Newgate

  Calendar. The problem was solved.

  As he rose to his feet his heavy face brightened slowly with a

  terrible smile. While the woman's Conf ession was in his pocket

  the woman herself was in his power. "If she wants it back," he

  said, "she must get it on my terms." With that resolution, he

  opened the door, and me
t Hester Dethridge, face to face, in the

  passage.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIFTH.

  THE SIGNS OF THE END.

  THE servant, appearing the next morning in Anne's room with the

  breakfast tray, closed the door with an air of mystery, and

  announced that strange things were going on in the house.

  "Did you hear nothing last night, ma'am," she asked, "down stairs

  in the passage?"

  "I thought I heard some voices whispering outside my room," Anne

  replied. "Has any thing happened?"

  Extricated from the confusion in which she involved it, the

  girl's narrative amounted in substance to this. She had been

  startled by the sudden appearance of her mistress in the passage,

  staring about her wildly, like a woman who had gone out of her

  senses. Almost at the same moment "the master" had flung open the

  drawing-room door. He had caught Mrs. Dethridge by the arm, had

  dragged her into the room, and had closed the door again. After

  the two had remained shut up together for more than half an hour,

  Mrs. Dethridge had come out, as pale as ashes, and had gone up

  stairs trembling like a person in great terror. Some time later,

  when the servant was in bed, but not asleep, she had seen a light

  under her door, in the narrow wooden passage which separated

  Anne's bedroom from Hester's bedroom, and by which she obtained

  access to her own little sleeping-chamber beyond. She had got out

  of bed; had looked through the keyhole; and had seen "the master"

  and Mrs. Dethridge standing together examining the walls of the

  passage. "The master" had laid his hand upon the wall, on the

  side of his wife's room, and had looked at Mrs. Dethridge. And

  Mrs. Dethridge had looked back at him, and had shaken her head.

  Upon that he had said in a whisper (still with his hand on the

  wooden wall), "Not to be done here?" And Mrs. Dethridge had

  shaken her head. He had considered a moment, and had whispered

  again, "The other room will do! won't it?" And Mrs. Dethridge had

  nodded her head--and so they had parted. That was the story of

  the night. Early in the morning, more strange things had

  happened. The master had gone out, with a large sealed packet in

  his hand, covered with many stamps; taking his own letter to the

  post, instead of sending the servant with it as usual. On his

  return, Mrs. Dethridge had gone out next, and had come back with

  something in a jar which she had locked up in her own

  sitting-room. Shortly afterward, a working-man had brought a

  bundle of laths, and some mortar and plaster of Paris, which had

  been carefully placed together in a corner of the scullery. Last,

  and most remarkable in the series of domestic events, the girl

  had received permission to go home and see her friends in the

  country, on that very day; having been previously informed, when

  she entered Mrs. Dethridge's service, that she was not to expect

  to have a holiday granted to her until after Christmas. Such were

  the strange things which had happened in the house since the

  previous night. What was the interpretation to be placed on them?

  The right interpretation was not easy to discover.

  Some of the events pointed apparently toward coming repairs or

  alterations in the cottage. But what Geoffrey could have to do

  with them (being at the time served with a notice to quit), and

  why Hester Dethridge should have shown the violent agitation

  which had been described, were mysteries which it was impossible

  to penetrate.

  Anne dismissed the girl with a little present and a few kind

  words. Under other circumstances, the incomprehensible

  proceedings in the house might have made her seriously uneasy.

  But her mind was now occupied by more pressing anxieties.

  Blanche's second letter (received from Hester Dethridge on the

  previous evening) informed her that Sir Patrick persisted in his

  resolution, and that he and his niece might be expected, come

  what might of it, to present themselves at the cottage on that

  day.