she heard every sound in the house.
At last, when it was twelve, she heard Mr Budd go out; she heard the door slam.
Dempster had not moved. Was he asleep? Would he forget? The minute seemed long,
while, with a quickening pulse, she was on the stretch to catch every sound.
"Janet!" The loud jarring voice seemed to strike her like a hurled weapon.
"Janet!" he called again, moving out of the dining-room to the foot of the
stairs.
There was a pause of a minute.
"If you don't come, I'll kill you."
Another pause, and she heard him turn back into the dining-room. He was gone for
a light? perhaps for a weapon. Perhaps he would kill her. Let him. Life was as
hideous as death. For years she had been rushing on to some unknown but certain
horror; and now she was close upon it. She was almost glad. She was in a state
of flushed feverish defiance that neutralised her woman's terrors.
She heard his heavy step on the stairs; she saw the slowly advancing light. Then
she saw the tall massive figure, and the heavy face, now fierce with drunken
rage. He had nothing but the candle in his hand. He set it down on the table,
and advanced close to the bed.
"So you think you'll defy me, do you? We'll see how long that will last. Get up,
madam; out of bed this instant!"
In the close presence of the dreadful man?of this huge crushing force, armed
with savage will? poor Janet's desperate defiance all forsook her, and her
terrors came back. Trembling she got up, and stood helpless in her night-dress
before her husband.
He seized her with his heavy grasp by the shoulder, and pushed her before him.
"I'll cool your hot spirit for you! I'll teach you to brave me!"
Slowly he pushed her along before him, down stairs and through the passage,
where a small oil-lamp was still flickering. What was he going to do to her? She
thought every moment he was going to dash her before him on the ground. But she
gave no scream?she only trembled.
He pushed her on to the entrance, and held her firmly in his grasp, while he
lifted the latch of the door. Then he opened the door a little way, thrust her
out, and slammed it behind her.
For a short space, it seemed like a deliverance to Janet. The harsh north-east
wind, that blew through her thin night-dress, and sent her long heavy black hair
streaming, seemed like the breath of pity after the grasp of that threatening
monster. But soon the sense of release from an overpowering terror gave way
before the sense of the fate that had really come upon her.
This, then, was what she had been travelling towards through her long years of
misery! Not yet death. O! if she had been brave enough for it, death would have
been better. The servants slept at the back of the house; it was impossible to
make them hear, so that they might let her in again quietly, without her
husband's knowledge. And she would not have tried. He had thrust her out, and it
should be for ever.
There would have been dead silence in Orchard Street but for the whistling of
the wind and the swirling of the March dust on the pavement. Thick clouds
covered the sky; every door was closed; every window was dark. No ray of light
fell on the tall white figure that stood in lonely misery on the door-step; no
eye rested on Janet as she sank down on the cold stone, and looked into the
dismal night. She seemed to be looking into her own blank future.
CHAPTER XV.
The stony street, the bitter north-east wind and darkness?and in the midst of
them a tender woman thrust out from her husband's home in her thin night-dress,
the harsh wind cutting her naked feet, and driving her long hair away from her
half-clad bosom, where the poor heart is crushed with anguish and despair.
The drowning man, urged by the supreme agony, lives in an instant through all
his happy and unhappy past: when the dark flood has fallen like a curtain,
memory, in a single moment, sees the drama acted over again. And even in those
earlier crises, which are but types of death ?when we are cut off abruptly from
the life we have known, when we can no longer expect tomorrow to resemble
yesterday, and find ourselves by some sudden shock on the confines of the
unknown?there is often the same sort of lightning-flash through the dark and
unfrequented chambers of memory.
When Janet sat down shivering on the door-stone, with the door shut upon her
past life, and the future black and unshapen before her as the night, the scenes
of her childhood, her youth and her painful womanhood, rushed back upon her
consciousness, and made one picture with her present desolation. The petted
child taking her newest toy to bed with her?the young girl, proud in strength
and beauty, dreaming that life was an easy thing, and that it was pitiful
weakness to be unhappy?the bride, passing with trembling joy from the outer
court to the inner sanctuary of woman's life?the wife, beginning her initiation
into sorrow, wounded, resenting, yet still hoping and forgiving?the poor bruised
woman, seeking through weary years the one refuge of despair, oblivion:?Janet
seemed to herself all these in the same moment that she was conscious of being
seated on the cold stone under the shock of a new misery. All her early
gladness, all her bright hopes and illusions, all her gifts of beauty and
affection, served only to darken the riddle of her life; they were the betraying
promises of a cruel destiny which had brought out those sweet blossoms only that
the winds and storms might have a greater work of desolation, which had nursed
her like a pet fawn into tenderness and fond expectation, only that she might
feel a keener terror in the clutch of the panther. Her mother had sometimes said
that troubles were sent to make us better and draw us nearer to God. What
mockery that seemed to Janet! Her troubles had been sinking her lower from year
to year, pressing upon her like heavy fever-laden vapours, and perverting the
very plenitude of her nature into a deeper source of disease. Her wretchedness
had been a perpetually tightening instrument of torture, which had gradually
absorbed all the other sensibilities of her nature into the sense of pain and
the maddened craving for relief. Oh, if some ray of hope, of pity, of
consolation, would pierce through the horrible gloom, she might believe then in
a Divine love?in a heavenly Father who cared for His children! But now she had
no faith, no trust. There was nothing she could lean on in the wide world, for
her mother was only a fellow-sufferer in her own lot. The poor patient woman
could do little more than mourn with her daughter: she had humble resignation
enough to sustain her own soul, but she could no more give comfort and fortitude
to Janet, than the withered ivy-covered trunk can bear up its strong,
full-boughed offspring crashing down under an Alpine storm. Janet felt she was
alone: no human soul had measured her anguish, had understood her self-despair,
had entered into her sorrows and her sins with that deep-sighted sympathy which
is wiser than all blame, more potent than all reproof?such sympathy as had
swelled her own heart for many a sufferer. And if there was any Divine Pity, she
could not feel it; it kept aloof from her, it poured no balm into her wounds, it
stretched out no hand to bear up her weak resolve, to fortify her fainting
courage.
Now, in her utmost loneliness, she shed no tear: she sat staring fixedly into
the darkness, while inwardly she gazed at her own past, almost losing the sense
that it was her own, or that she was anything more than a spectator at a strange
and dreadful play.
The loud sound of the church clock striking one, startled her. She had not been
there more than half an hour, then? And it seemed to her as if she had been
there half the night. She was getting benumbed with cold. With that strong
instinctive dread of pain and death which had made her recoil from suicide, she
started up, and the disagreeable sensation of resting on her benumbed feet
helped to recall her completely to the sense of the present. The wind was
beginning to make rents in the clouds, and there came every now and then a dim
light of stars that frightened her more than the darkness; it was like a cruel
finger pointing her out in her wretchedness and humiliation; it made her shudder
at the thought of the morning twilight. What could she do? Not go to her
mother?not rouse her in the dead of night to tell her this. Her mother would
think she was a spectre; it would be enough to kill her with horror. And the way
there was so long ... if she should meet some one ... yet she must seek some
shelter, somewhere to hide herself. Five doors off there was Mrs Pettifer's;
that kind woman would take her in. It was of no use now to be proud and mind
about the world's knowing: she had nothing to wish for, nothing to care about;
only she could not help shuddering at the thought of braving the morning light,
there, in the street?she was frightened at the though of spending long hours in
the cold. Life might mean anguish, might mean despair; but?oh, she must clutch
it, though with bleeding fingers; her feet must cling to the firm earth that the
sunlight would revisit, not slip into the untried abyss, where she might long
even for familiar pains.
Janet trod slowly with her naked feet on the rough pavement, trembling at the
fitful gleams of starlight, and supporting herself by the wall, as the gusts of
wind drove right against her. The very wind was cruel: it tried to push her back
from the door where she wanted to go and knock and ask for pity.
Mrs Pettifer's house did not look into Orchard Street: it stood a little way up
a wide passage which opened into the street through an archway. Janet turned up
the archway, and saw a faint light coming from Mrs Pettifer's bedroom window.
The glimmer of a rushlight from a room where a friend was lying, was like a ray
of mercy to Janet, after that long, long time of darkness and loneliness; it
would not be so dreadful to awake Mrs Pettifer as she had thought. Yet she
lingered some minutes at the door before she gathered courage to knock; she felt
as if the sound must betray her to others besides Mrs Pettifer, though there was
no other dwelling that opened into the passage?only warehouses and outbuildings.
There was no gravel for her to throw up at the window, nothing but heavy
pavement; there was no door-bell; she must knock. Her first rap was very
timid?one feeble fall of the knocker; and then she stood still again for many
minutes; but presently she rallied her courage and knocked several times
together, not loudly, but rapidly, so that Mrs Pettifer, if she only heard the
sound, could not mistake it. And she had heard it, for by-and-by the casement of
her window was opened, and Janet perceived that she was bending out to try and
discern who it was at the door.
"It is I, Mrs Pettifer; it is Janet Dempster. Take me in, for pity's sake."
"Merciful God! what has happened?"
"Robert has turned me out. I have been in the cold a long while."
Mrs Pettifer said no more, but hurried away from the window, and was soon at the
door with a light in her hand.
"Come in, my poor dear, come in," said the good woman in a tremulous voice,
drawing Janet within the door. "Come into my warm bed, and may God in heaven
save and comfort you."
The pitying eyes, the tender voice, the warm touch, caused a rush of new feeling
in Janet. Her heart swelled, and she burst out suddenly, like a child, into loud
passionate sobs. Mrs Pettifer could not help crying with her, but she said,
"Come up-stairs, my dear, come. Don't linger in the cold."
She drew the poor sobbing thing gently up-stairs, and persuaded her to get into
the warm bed. But it was long before Janet could lie down. She sat leaning her
head on her knees, convulsed by sobs, while the motherly woman covered her with
clothes and held her arms round her to comfort her with warmth. At last the
hysterical passion had exhausted itself, and she fell back on the pillow; but
her throat was still agitated by piteous after-sobs, such as shake a little
child even when it has found a refuge from its alarms on its mother's lap.
Now Janet was getting quieter, Mrs Pettifer determined to go down and make a cup
of tea, the first thing a kind old woman thinks of as a solace and restorative
under all calamities. Happily there was no danger of awaking her servant, a
heavy girl of sixteen, who was snoring blissfully in the attic, and might be
kept ignorant of the way in which Mrs Dempster had come in. So Mrs Pettifer
busied herself with rousing the kitchen fire, which was kept in under a huge
"raker"?a possibility by which the coal of the midland counties atones for all
its slowness and white ashes.
When she carried up the tea, Janet was lying quite still; the spasmodic
agitation had ceased, and she seemed lost in thought; her eyes were fixed
vacantly on the rushlight shade, and all the lines of sorrow were deepened in
her face.
"Now, my dear," said Mrs Pettifer, "let me persuade you to drink a cup of tea;
you'll find it warm you and soothe you very much. Why, dear heart, your feet are
like ice still. Now, do drink this tea, and I'll wrap 'em up in flannel, and
then they'll get warm."
Janet turned her dark eyes on her old friend and stretched out her arms. She was
too much oppressed to say anything; her suffering lay like a heavy weight on her
power of speech; but she wanted to kiss the good kind woman. Mrs Pettifer,
setting down the cup, bent towards the sad beautiful face, and Janet kissed her
with earnest sacramental kisses?such kisses as seal a new and closer bond
between the helper and the helped.
She drank the tea obediently. "It does warm me," she said. "But now you will get
into bed. I shall lie still now."
Mrs Pettifer felt it was the best thing she could do to lie down quietly, and
say no more. She hoped Janet might go to sleep. As for herself, with that
tendency to wakefulness common to advanced years, she found it impossible to
compose herself to sleep again after this agitating surprise. She lay listening
to the clock, wondering what had led to this new outrage of Dempster's,
praying
for the poor thing at her side, and pitying the mother who would have to hear it
all tomorrow.
CHAPTER XVI.
Janet lay still, as she had promised; but the tea, which had warmed her and
given her a sense of greater bodily ease, had only heightened the previous
excitement of her brain. Her ideas had a new vividness, which made her feel as
if she had only seen life through a dim haze before; her thoughts, instead of
springing from the action of her own mind, were external existences, that thrust
themselves imperiously upon her like haunting visions. The future took shape
after shape of misery before her, always ending in her being dragged back again
to her old life of terror, and stupor, and fevered despair. Her husband had so
long overshadowed her life that her imagination could not keep hold of a
condition in which that great dread was absent; and even his absence? what was
it? only a dreary vacant flat, where there was nothing to strive after, nothing
to long for.
At last, the light of morning quenched the rushlight, and Janet's thoughts
became more and more fragmentary and confused. She was every moment slipping off
the level on which she lay thinking, down, down into some depth from which she
tried to rise again with a start. Slumber was stealing over her weary brain:
that uneasy slumber which is only better than wretched waking, because the life
we seem to live in it determines no wretched future, because the things we do
and suffer in it are but hateful shadows, and leave no impress that petrifies
into an irrevocable past.
She had scarcely been asleep an hour when her movements became more violent, her
mutterings more frequent and agitated, till at last she started up with a
smothered cry, and looked wildly round her, shaking with terror.
"Don't be frightened, dear Mrs Dempster," said Mrs Pettifer, who was up and
dressing, "you are with me, your old friend, Mrs Pettifer. Nothing will harm
you."
Janet sank back again on her pillow, still trembling. After lying silent a
little while, she said, "It was a horrible dream. Dear Mrs Pettifer, don't let
any one know I am here. Keep it a secret. If he finds out, he will come and drag
me back again."
"No, my dear, depend on me. I've just thought, I shall send the servant home on
a holiday?I've promised her a good while. I'll send her away as soon as she's
had her breakfast, and she'll have no occasion to know you're here. There's no
holding servants' tongues, if you let 'em know anything. What they don't know,
they won't tell; you may trust 'em so far. But shouldn't you like me to go and
fetch your mother?"
"No, not yet, not yet. I can't bear to see her yet."
"Well, it shall be just as you like. Now try and get to sleep again. I shall
leave you for an hour or two, and send off Phoebe, and then bring you some
breakfast. I'll lock the door behind me, so as the girl mayn't come in by
chance."
The daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else. In the
night it presses on our imagination?the forms it takes are false, fitful,
exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of
definite measurable reality. The man who looks with ghastly horror on all his
property aflame in the dead of night, has not half the sense of destitution he
will have in the morning, when he walks over the ruins lying blackened in the
pitiless sunshine. That moment of intensest depression was come to Janet, when
the daylight which showed her the walls, and chairs, and tables, and all the
commonplace reality that surrounded her, seemed to lay bare the future too, and
bring out into oppressive distinctness all the details of a weary life to be
lived from day to day, with no hope to strengthen her against that evil habit,
which she loathed in retrospect and yet was powerless to resist. Her husband
would never consent to her living away from him: she was become necessary to his