When he had disappeared, and she had heard the click of the lock as he opened the great door and went out into the pure fresh morning air, Mrs. Brookes emerged from behind the partition-door, and softly took the way to Mrs. Carruthers's bedroom. The outer door was slightly open, the heavy silken curtain within hung closely over the aperture. The old woman pushed it gently aside, and, noiselessly crossing the room, drew the window curtain, and let in sufficient light to allow her to see that Mrs. Carruthers was still sleeping. Her face, pale, and even in repose bearing a troubled expression, was turned towards the old woman, who seated herself in an arm-chair beside the bed, and looked silently and sadly on the features, whose richest bloom and earliest sign of fading she had so faithfully watched.
"How am I to tell her?" she thought. "How am I to make her see what I see, suspect what I suspect? and yet she must know all, for the least imprudence, a moment's forgetfulness, would ruin him. How am I to tell her?"
The-silver bell of a little French clock on the chimney-piece rang out the hour melodiously, but its warning struck upon the old woman's ear menacingly. There was much to do, and little time to do it in; she must not hesitate longer. So she laid her withered, blanched old hand upon the polished, ivory-white fingers of the sleeper, lying with the purposelessness of deep sleep upon the coverlet, and addressed her as she had been used to do in her girlhood, and her early desolate widowhood, when her humble friend had been well-nigh her only one.
"My dear," she said, "my dear." Mrs. Carruthers's hand twitched in her light grasp; she turned her head away with a troubled sigh, but yet did not wake. The old woman spoke again: "My dear, I have something to say to you."
Then Mrs. Carruthers awoke fully, and to an instantaneous comprehension that something was wrong. All her fears, all her suspicions of the day before, returned to her mind in one flash of apprehension, and she sat up white and breathless.
"What is it, Ellen? Has he found out? Does he know?"
"Who? What do you mean?"
"Mr. Carruthers. Does he know George was here?"
"God forbid!" said the old woman, in a trembling tone.
She felt the task she had before her almost beyond her power of execution. But her mistress's question, her instinctive fear, had given her a little help.
"No," she said, "he knows nothing, and God send he may neither know nor suspect anything about our dear boy! but you must be quiet now and listen to me, for I must have said my say before Dixon comes--she must not find me here."
"Why are you here?" asked Mrs. Carruthers, who had sat up in bed, and was now looking at the old woman, with a face which had no more trace of colour than the pillow from which it had just been raised. "Tell me, Ellen; do not keep me in suspense. Is anything wrong about George? It must concern him, whatever it is."
"My dear," began Mrs. Brookes--and now she held the slender fingers tightly in her withered palm--"I fear there is something very wrong with George."
"Is he--is he dead?" asked the mother, in a faint voice.
"No, no; he is well and safe, and far away from this, I hope and trust."
Mrs. Carruthers made no answer, but she gazed at her old friend with irresistible, pitiful entreaty. Mrs. Brookes answered the dumb appeal.
"Yes, my dear, I'll tell you all. I must, for his sake. Do you know what was the business that brought that strange gentleman here, he that went out with master, and dined here last night? No, you don't. I thought not. Thank God, you have got no hint of it from any one but me."
"Go on, go on," said Mrs. Carruthers, in a yet fainter voice.
"Do you remember, when George was here in February, you gave him money to buy a coat?"
"Yes," Mrs. Carruthers rather sighed than said.
"He bought one at Evans's, and he was remarked by the old man, who would know him again if he saw him. The business on which the strange gentleman came to master was to get him to help, as a magistrate, in finding the person who bought that coat at Evans's, Amherst."
"But why? What had he done? How was the coat known?"
"My dear," said Mrs. Brookes--and now she laid one arm gently round her mistress's shoulder as she leaned against the pillows--"the wearer of that coat is suspected of having murdered a man, whose body was found by the river-side in London the other day."
"My God!" moaned the mother, and a hue as of death overspread her features.
"My dear, he didn't do it. I'm sure he didn't do it. I would stake my soul upon it. It is some dreadful mistake. Keep up until I have done, for God's sake, and George's sake, keep up--remember there is no danger unless you lose courage and give them a hint of anything. Be sure we shall find he has sold the coat to some one else, and that some one has done this dreadful thing. But you must keep up--here, let me bathe your face and hands while I am talking, and then I'll go away, and, when Dixon comes, you must just say you are not well, and don't mean to get up to breakfast, and then I shall have an excuse for coming to you. There! you are better now, I am sure. Yes, yes; don't try to speak; I'll tell you without asking," she went on, in a rapid whisper. "The strange gentleman and master saw Evans, and he told them when he sold the coat, and the sort of person he sold it to; but Gibson and Thomas say he could not have told them distinct, for they heard the strange gentleman saying to master, in the carriage, that the description was of no use. And I am certain sure that there is not the least suspicion that he has ever been in Amherst since he bought the coat."
"I don't understand," stammered Mrs. Carruthers. "When--when did this happen?"
"A few days ago: it's all in the papers."
Mrs. Carruthers groaned.
"Nothing about George, but about finding the body and the coat. It is all here." The old woman took a tightly folded newspaper from her pocket. The light was too dim for her to read its contents to her mistress, who was wholly incapable of reading them herself. Mrs. Brookes, paper in hand, was going to the window, to withdraw the curtain completely, when she paused.
"No," she said; "Dixon will be here too soon. Better that you should ring for her at once, and send her for me. Can you do this, my dear? keeping yourself up by remembering that this is only some dreadful mistake, and that George never did it--no, no more than you did. Can you let me go away for a few minutes, and then come back to you? Remember, we cannot be too careful, for his sake; and if Dixon found me here at an unusual hour, the servants would know there is some secret or another between us."
"I can bear anything--I can do anything you tell me," was Mrs. Carruthers's answer, in a whisper.
"Well then, first lie down, and I will close the curtains and leave you. When I have had time to get to my room, ring for Dixon. Tell her you are ill. When she lets the light in she will see that for herself, and desire her to send me to you."
In another minute the room was once more in darkness, and Mrs. Brookes went down the grand staircase, in order to avoid meeting any of the servants, crossed the hall, and gained her own apartment without being observed. A short time, but long to her impatience, had elapsed, when Mrs. Carruthers's maid knocked at the door, and having received permission to enter, came in with an important face. She delivered the message which Mrs. Brookes was expecting, and added that she had never seen her lady look so ill in all her born days.
"Looks more like a corpse, I do assure you, than like the lady I undressed last night, and circles under her eyes, dreadful. I only hope it ain't typus, for I'm dreadful nervous, not being used to sickness, which indeed I never engaged for. But, if you please, Mrs. Brookes, you was to go to her immediate, and I'm to let Miss Carruthers know as she's to make tea this morning for master, all to their two selves, which he won't like it, I dare say."
Then the talkative damsel went her way to Miss Carruthers's room, and Mrs. Brookes hurried to that of her unhappy mistress. She had again raised herself in the bed, and was looking eagerly towards the door, with hollow haggard eyes, and lips ashy pale, whose trembling she in vain tried to control.
"Lock both doors, Ellen," she said, "and tell me all. Give me the paper; I can read it--I can indeed."
She took it and read it steadily through--read it with the same horrible emotion, a thousand times intensified, which had agitated the faithful servant a few hours previously. Standing by the bedside, Mrs. Brookes gazed upon her pale, convulsed features, as she read, and ever, as she saw the increasing agony which they betrayed, she murmured in accents of earnest entreaty:
"Don't, my dear, for God's sake, don't, not for a moment, don't you believe it. He sold the coat, depend upon it. It looks very bad, very black and bad, but you may be sure there's no truth in it. He sold the coat."
She spoke to deaf ears. When Mrs. Carruthers had read the last line of the account of the inquest on the body of the unknown man, the paper dropped from her hand; she turned upon the old nurse a face which, from that moment, she never had the power to forget, and said:
"He wore it--I saw it on him on Friday," and the next moment slipped down among the pillows, and lay as insensible as a stone.
The old woman gave no alarm, called for no assistance, but silently and steadily applied herself to recalling Mrs. Carruthers to consciousness. She had no fear of interruption. Mr. Carruthers invariably went direct to the breakfast-room on returning from his morning tour of inspection, and Clare would not visit Mrs. Carruthers in her own apartment unasked. So Mrs. Brookes set the windows and doors wide open, and let the sweet morning air fan the insensible face, while she applied all the remedies at hand. At length Mrs. Carruthers sighed deeply, opened her eyes, and raised her hand to her forehead, where it came in contact with the wet hair.
"Hush, my dear," said Mrs. Brookes, as she made an almost inarticulate attempt to speak. "Do not try to say anything yet. Lie quite still, until you are better."
Mrs. Carruthers closed her eyes again and kept silent. When, after an interval, she began to look more life-like, the old woman said, softly:
"You must not give way again like this, for George's sake. I don't care about his wearing the coat. I know it looks bad, but it is a mistake, I am quite sure. Don't I know the boy as well as you do, and maybe better, and don't I know his tender heart, with all his wildness, and that he never shed a fellow-creature's blood in anger, or for any other reason. But it's plain he is suspected--not he, for they don't know him, thank God, but the man that wore the coat, and we must warn him, and keep it from master. Master would go mad, I think, if anything like suspicion or disgrace came of Master George, more than the disgrace he thinks the poor boy's goings on already. You must keep steady and composed, my dear, and you must write to him. Are you listening to me? Do you understand me?" asked the old woman, anxiously, for Mrs. Carruthers's eyes were wild and wandering, and her hand twitched convulsively in her grasp.
"Yes, yes," she murmured, "but I tell you, Ellen, he wore the coat--my boy wore the coat."
"And I tell you, I don't care whether he wore the coat or not," repeated Mrs. Brookes, emphatically. "He can explain that, no doubt of it; but he must be kept out of trouble, and you must be kept out of trouble, and the only way to do that, is to let him know what brought the strange gentleman to Poynings, and what he and master found out. Remember, he never did this thing, but, my dear, he has been in bad hands lately, you know that; for haven't you suffered in getting him out of them, and I don't say but that he may be mixed up with them that did. I'm afraid there can't be any doubt of that, and he must be warned. Try and think of what he told you about himself, not only just now, but when he came here before, and you will see some light, I am sure."
But Mrs. Carruthers could not think of anything, could not remember anything, could see no light. A deadly horrible conviction had seized upon her, iron fingers clutched her heart, a faint sickening terror held her captive, in body and spirit; and as the old woman gazed at her, and found her incapable of answering, the fear that her mistress was dying then and there before her eyes took possession of her. She folded up the newspaper which had fallen from Mrs. Carruthers's hand upon the bed, replaced it in her pocket, and rang the bell for Dixon.
"My mistress is very ill," she said, when Dixon entered the room. "You had better go and find master, and send him here. Tell him to send Dr. Munns at once."
Dixon gave a frightened, sympathizing glance at the figure on the bed, over which the old woman was bending with such kindly solicitude, and then departed on her errand. She found Mr. Carruthers still in the breakfast-room. He was seated at the table, and held in his hand a newspaper, from which he had evidently been reading, when Dixon knocked at the door; for he was holding it slightly aside, and poising his gold eye-glass in the other hand, when the woman entered. Mr. Carruthers was unaccustomed to being disturbed, and he did not like it, so that it was in a tone of some impatience that he said:
"Well, Dixon, what do you want?"
"If you please, sir," replied Dixon hesitatingly, "my mistress is not well."
"So I hear," returned her master; "she sent word she did not mean to appear at breakfast. He said it rather huffily, for not to appear at breakfast was, in Mr. Carruthers's eyes, not to have a well-regulated mind, and not to have a well-regulated mind was very lamentable and shocking indeed.
"Yes, sir," Dixon went on, "but I'm afraid she's very ill indeed. She has been fainting this long time, sir, and Mrs. Brookes can't bring her to at all. She sent me to ask you to send for Dr. Munns at once, and will you have the goodness to step up and see my mistress, sir?"
"God bless my soul," said Mr. Carruthers, pettishly, but rising as he spoke, and pushing his chair away. "This is very strange; she has been exposing herself to cold, I suppose. Yes, yes, go on and tell Mrs. Brookes I am coming, as soon as I send Gibson for Dr. Munns."
Dixon left the room, and Mr. Carruthers rang the bell, and desired that the coachman should attend him immediately. When Dixon had entered the breakfast-room, Clare Carruthers had been standing by the window, looking out on the garden, her back turned towards her uncle. She had not looked round once during the colloquy between her uncle and his wife's maid, but had remained quite motionless. Now Mr. Carruthers addressed her.
"Clare," he said, "you had better go to Mrs. Carruthers." But his niece was no longer in the room; she had softly opened the French window, and passed into the flower-garden, carrying among the sweet, opening flowers of the early summer, and into the serene air, a face which might have vied in its rigid terror with the face upstairs. When Mr. Carruthers had come in that morning, and joined Clare in the pretty breakfast-room, he was in an unusually pleasant mood, and had greeted his niece with uncommon kindness. He had found everything in good order out of doors. No advantage had been taken of his absence to neglect the inexorable sweepings and rollings, the clippings and trimmings, the gardening and grooming. So Mr. Carruthers was in good humour in consequence, and also because he was still nourishing the secret sense of his own importance, which had sprung up in his magisterial breast under the flattering influence of Mr. Dalrymple's visit. So when he saw Clare seated before the breakfast equipage, looking in her simple, pretty morning dress as fair and bright as the morning itself, and when he received an intimation that he was not to expect to see his wife at breakfast, he recalled the resolution he had made last night, and determined to broach the subject of Mr. Dalrymple's visit to his niece without delay.
A pile of letters and newspapers lay on a salver beside Mr. Carruthers's plate, but he did not attend to them until he had made a very respectable beginning in the way of breakfast. He talked to Clare in a pleasant tone, and presently asked her if she had been looking at the London papers during the last few days. Clare replied that she seldom read anything beyond the deaths, births, and marriages, and an occasional leader, and had not read even so much while she had been at the Sycamores.
"Why do you ask, uncle?" she said. "Is there any particular news?"
"Why, yes, there is," replied Mr. Carruthers, pompously.
"There is a matter attracting public attention just now in which I am, strange to say, a good deal interested--in which responsibility has been laid on me, indeed, in a way which, though flattering--very flattering indeed--is, at the same time, embarrassing."
Mr. Carruthers became more and more pompous with every word he spoke. Clare could not repress a disrespectful notion that he bore an absurd resemblance to the turkey-cock, whose struttings and gobblings had often amused her in the poultry-yard, as he mouthed his words and moved his chin about in his stiff and spotless cravat. His niece was rather surprised by the matter of his discourse, as she was not accustomed to associate the idea of importance to society at large with Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, and cherished a rather settled conviction that, mighty potentate as he was within the handsome gates of Poynings, the world outside wagged very independently of him. She looked up at him with an expression of interest and also of surprise, but fortunately she did not give utterance to the latter and certainly predominant sentiment.
"The fact is," said Mr. Carruthers, "a murder has been committed in London under very peculiar circumstances. It is a most mysterious affair, and the only solution of the mystery hitherto suggested is that the motive is political."
He paused, cleared his throat, once more settled his chin comfortably, and went on while Clare listened, wondering more and more how such a matter could affect her uncle. She was a gentle-hearted girl; but not in the least silly, and quite free from any sort of affectation; so she expressed no horror or emotion at the mere abstract idea of the murder, as a more young-ladyish young lady would have done.
"Yes, uncle?" she said, simply, as he paused.
Mr. Carruthers continued:
"The murdered man was found by the river-side, stabbed, and robbed of whatever money and jewelry he had possessed. He was a good-looking man, young, and evidently a foreigner; but there were no means of identifying the body, and the inquest was adjourned--in fact, is still adjourned."
"What an awful death to come by, in a strange country!" said Clare, solemnly. "How dreadful to think that his friends and relatives will perhaps never know his fate! But how did they know the poor creature was a foreigner, uncle?"
"By his dress, my dear. It appears he had on a fur-lined coat, with a hood--quite a foreign article of dress; and the only person at the inquest able to throw any light on the crime was a waiter at an eating-house in the Strand, who said that the murdered man had dined there on a certain evening--last Thursday, I believe--and had worn the fur coat, and spoken in a peculiar squeaky voice. The waiter felt sure he was not an Englishman, though he spoke good English. So the inquest was adjourned in order to get more evidence, if possible, as to the identity of the murdered man and also that of the last person who had been seen in his company. And this brings me to the matter in which I am interested."
Clare watched her uncle with astonishment as he rose from his chair and planted himself upon the hearth-rug before the fireplace, now adorned with its summer ornaments of plants and flowers, and draped in muslin. Taking up the familiar British attitude, and looking, if possible, more than ever pompous, Mr. Carruthers proceeded:
"You will be surprised to learn, Clare, that the visit of the gentleman who came here yesterday, and with whom I went out, had reference to this murder."
"How, uncle?" exclaimed Clare. "What on earth have you, or has any one here, to do with it?"
"Wait until I have done, and you will see," said Mr. Carruthers in a tone of stately rebuke. "The last person seen in the company of the man afterwards found murdered, and who dined with him at the tavern, wore a coat which the waiter who recognized the body had chanced to notice particularly. The appearance of this person the man failed in describing with much distinctness; but he was quite positive about the coat, which he had taken from the man and hung up on a peg with his own hands. And now, Clare, I am coming to the strangest part of this strange story."
The girl listened with interest indeed, and with attention, but still wondering how her uncle could be involved in the matter, and perhaps feeling a little impatient at the slowness with which, in his self-importance, he told the story.
"I was much surprised," continued Mr. Carruthers, "to find in the gentleman who came here yesterday, and whose name was Dalrymple, an emissary from the Home Office, intrusted by Lord Wolstenholme with a special mission to me"--impossible to describe the pomposity of Mr. Carruthers's expression and utterance at this point--"to me. He came to request me to assist him in investigating this most intricate and important case. It is not a mere police case, you must understand, my dear. The probability is that the murdered man is a political refugee, and that the crime has been perpetrated"--Mr. Carruthers brought out the word with indescribable relish--"by a member of one of the secret societies, in revenge for the defection of the victim, or in apprehension of his betrayal of the cause."
"What cause, uncle?" asked Clare innocently. She was not of a sensational turn of mind, had no fancy for horrors as horrors, and was getting a little tired of her uncle's story.
"God knows, my dear--some of their liberty, fraternity, and equality nonsense, I suppose. At all events, this is the supposition; and to ask my aid in investigating the only clue in the possession of the government was the object of Mr. Dalrymple's visit yesterday. The man who was seen in the company of the murdered man by the waiter at the tavern, and who went away with him, wore a coat made by Evans of Amherst. You know him, Clare--the old man who does so much of our work here. I went to his shop with Mr. Dalrymple, and we found out all about the coat. He remembered it exactly, by the description; and told us when he had made it (two years ago), and when he had sold it (six weeks ago), to a person who paid for it with a ten-pound note with the Post-office stamp upon it. The old man is not very bright, however; for though he remembered the circumstance, and found the date in his day-book, he could not give anything like a clear description of the man who had bought the coat. He could only tell us, in general terms, that he would certainly know him again if he should see him; but he talked about a rather tall young man, neither stout nor thin, neither ugly nor handsome, dark-eyed and dark-haired,--in short, the kind of description which describes nothing. We came away as wise as we went, except in the matter of the date of the purchase of the coat. That does not help much towards the detection of the murderer, as a coat may change hands many times in six weeks, if it has been originally bought by a dubious person. The thing would have been to establish a likeness between the man described by Evans as the purchaser of the coat, and the man described by the waiter as the wearer of the coat at the tavern. But both descriptions are very vague."
"What was the coat like?" asked Clare in a strange, deliberate tone.
"It was a blue Witney overcoat, with a label inside the collar bearing Evans's name. The waiter at the tavern where the murdered man dined had read the name, and remembered it. This led to their sending to me; and my being known to the authorities as a very active magistrate"--here Mr. Carruthers swelled and pouted with importance--"they naturally communicated with me. The question is now, how I am to justify the very flattering confidence which Lord Wolstenholme has placed in me? It is a difficult question, and I have been considering it maturely. Mr. Dalrymple seems to think the clue quite lost. But I am not disposed to let it rest; I am determined to set every possible engine at work to discover whether the description given by the waiter and that given by Evans tally with one another."
"You said the inquest was adjourned, I think," said Clare.
"Yes, until to-day; but Mr. Dalrymple will not have learned anything. There will be an open verdict"--here Mr. Carruthers condescendingly explained to his niece the meaning of the term--"and the affair will be left to be unravelled in time. I am anxious to do all I can towards that end; it is a duty I owe to society, to Lord Wolstenholme, and to myself."
Clare had risen from her chair, and approached the window. Her uncle could not see her face, as he resumed his seat at the breakfast-table, and opened his letters in his usual deliberate and dignified manner. Being letters addressed to Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, they were, of course, important; but if they had not had that paramount claim to consideration, the communication in question might have been deemed dull and trivial. Whatever their nature, Clare Carruthers turned her head from the window and furtively watched her uncle during their perusal. He read them with uplifted eyebrows and much use of his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, as his habit was, but then laid them down without comment, and took up a newspaper.
"I dare say we shall find something about the business in this," he said, addressing his niece, but without turning his head in her direction. "Ah, I thought so; here it is: 'Mysterious circumstance; extraordinary supineness and stupidity of the police; no one arrested on suspicion; better arrest the wrong man, and tranquillize the public mind, than arrest no one at all.' I'm not convinced by that reasoning, I must say. What!--no reason for regarding the murder as a political assassination? Listen to this, Clare;" and he read aloud, while she stood by the window, her back turned towards him, and listened intently, greedily, with a terrible fear and sickness at her heart:
"'The supposition that this atrocious crime has been committed from political motives has, in our opinion, no foundation in probability, and derives very little support from common sense. The appearance of the body, the fineness of the linen, the expensive quality of the attire, the torn condition of the breast and sleeves of the shirt, which seems plainly to indicate that studs, probably of value, had been wrenched violently out; the extreme improbability that an individual, so handsomely dressed as the murdered man, would have been out without money in his pocket,--all indicate robbery, at least; and if perhaps more than robbery, certainly not less, to have been the motive of the crime. An absurd theory has been founded upon the peculiarity in the dress of the victim, and upon the remark made by the only witness at the inquest about his tone of voice. Nothing is more likely, in our opinion, than a complete miscarriage of justice in this atrocious case. Suspicion has been arbitrarily directed in one channel, and the result will be, probably, the total neglect of other and more likely ones. While the political murderer is being theorized about and "wanted," the more ordinary criminal--the ruffian who kills for gain, and, not for patriotism or principle--is as likely as not to escape comfortably, and enjoy his sway in some pleasant, unsuspected, and undisturbed retreat.'
"Now, I call this most unjustifiable," said Mr. Carruthers in a tone of dignified remonstrance and indignation. "Really, the liberty of the press is going quite too far. The Government are convinced that the murder is political, and I can't see--"
It was at this point of Mr. Carruthers's harangue that he was interrupted by his wife's maid. When he again looked for Clare she had disappeared, nor did he or any of the frightened and agitated household at Poynings see the young lady again for many hours. Dr. Munns arrived, and found Mr. Carruthers considerably distressed at the condition in which Mrs. Carruthers was, also a little annoyed at that lady's want of consideration in being ill, and unable to refrain from hinting, with much reserve and dignity of manner, that he was at present more than usually engaged in business of the last importance, which rendered it peculiarly unfortunate that he should have an additional care imposed on him--public importance, he took care to explain, and no less onerous than mysterious. But the worthy gentleman's pride and pompousness were soon snubbed by the extreme gravity of Dr. Munns's manner, as he answered his inquiries and put questions in his turn relative to his patient. The doctor was both alarmed and puzzled by Mrs. Carruthers's state. He told her husband she was very seriously ill: he feared brain-fever had already set in. Could Mr. Carruthers account for the seizure in any way? No, Mr. Carruthers could not; neither could the housekeeper, nor Mrs. Carruthers's maid, both of whom were closely questioned, as having more and more frequent access to that lady's presence than any other members of the household.
Had Mrs. Carruthers heard any distressing intelligence? had she received a shock of any kind? the doctor inquired. Mr. Carruthers appeared to sustain one from the question. Of course not; certainly not; nothing of the kind, he replied, with some unrepressed irritation of manner, and secretly regarded the bare suggestion of such a possibility as almost indecent. Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings receive shocks indeed! The doctor, who knew and disregarded his peculiarities, calmly pursued his inquiries undeterred by Mr. Carruthers's demeanour; and finding that nothing particular had happened, acknowledged that, there being no apparent cause to which so sudden and serious an illness could be attributed, he was the more uneasy as to its probable result. Then Mr. Carruthers caught the infection of his alarm, and all the best side of his character, all the real love and appreciation of his wife, ordinarily overlaid by his egotism, came out in full force, and the staunchest stickler for domestic fealty could not have demanded greater solicitude than the frightened husband exhibited.
In a wonderfully short of space of time the house assumed the appearance which illness always gives. The servants went about their work whispering, and the sitting-rooms were silent and deserted. No one bestowed a thought on Clare. The attendants on the suffering woman, busily engaged in carrying out the orders given them by Dr. Munns, who remained for several hours with his patient; the alarmed husband, who wandered about disconsolately between his own library and his wife's room--all forgot the girl's existence. It was very late--within a few minutes of the usual dinner-hour (an inflexible period at Poynings)--when Clare Carruthers crossed the flower-garden, entered the house by the window through which she had left it, and stole gently upstairs to her own room. She threw her hat and shawl upon her bed and went to her dressing-table. There she stood for some minutes before the glass, holding her disordered hair back with her hands--there were bits of grass and fragments of leaves in it, as though she had been lying with her fair head prone upon the ground--and gazing upon her young misery-stricken face. White about the full pure lips, where the rich blood ordinarily glowed; purple about the long fair eyelids and the blushing cheeks, heavy-eyed,--the girl was piteous to see, and she knew it. The hours that had passed over since she left her uncle's presence in the morning had been laden with horror, with dread, with such anguish as had never in its lightest form touched her young spirit before; and she trembled as she marked the ravages they had made in her face.
"What shall I do?" she murmured, as though questioning her own forlorn image in the glass. "What shall I do? I dare not stay away from dinner, and what will they say when they see my face?"
She fastened up her hair, and bathed her face with cold water; then returned to the glass to look at it again; but the pallor was still upon the lips, the discoloration was still about the heavy eyelids. As she stood despairingly before the dressing-table, her maid came to her.
"The dinner-bell will not ring, ma'am," said the girl. "Mr. Carruthers is afraid of the noise for Mrs. Carruthers."
"Ay," said Clare, listlessly, still looking at the disfigured image in the glass. "How is she?"
"No better, ma'am; very bad indeed, I believe. But don't take on so, Miss Clare," her maid went on, affectionately. "She is not so bad as they say, perhaps; and, at all events, you'll knock yourself up, and be no comfort to Mr. Carruthers."
A light flashed upon Clare. She had only to keep silence, and no one would find her out; her tears, her anguish, would be imputed to her share of the family trouble. Her maid, who would naturally have noticed her appearance immediately, expressed no surprise. Mrs. Carruthers was very ill, then. Something new had occurred since the morning, when there had been no hint of anything serious in her indisposition. The maid evidently believed her mistress acquainted with all that had occurred. She had only to keep quiet, and nothing would betray her ignorance. So she allowed the girl to talk, while she made some trifling change in her dress, and soon learned all the particulars of Mrs. Carruthers's illness, and the doctor's visit, of her uncle's alarm, and Mrs. Brookes's devoted attendance on her mistress. Then Clare, trembling though relieved of her immediate apprehension of discovery, went down-stairs to join her uncle at their dreary dinner. He made no comment upon the girl's appearance, and, indeed, hardly spoke. The few words of sympathy which Clare ventured to say were briefly answered, and as soon as possible he left the dining-room. Clare sat by the table for a while, with her face buried in her hands, thinking, suffering, but not weeping. She had no more tears to-day to shed.
Presently she went to Mrs. Carruthers's room, and sat down on a chair behind the door, abstracted and silent. In the large dimly-lighted room she was hardly seen by the watchers. She saw her uncle come in, and stand forlornly by the bed; then the doctor came, and several figures moved about silently and went away, and then there was no one but Mrs. Brookes sitting still as a statue beside the sufferer, who lay in a state of stupor. How long she had been in the room before the old woman perceived her Clare did not know; but she felt Mrs. Brookes bending over her, and taking her hand, before she knew she had moved from the bedside.
"Pray go away and lie down, Miss Carruthers," the old woman said, half tenderly, half severely. "You can do no good here--no one can do any good here yet--and you will be ill yourself. We can't do with more trouble in the house, and crying your eyes out of your head, as you've been doing, won't help any one, my dear. I will send you word how she is the first thing in the morning."
The old woman raised the girl by a gentle impulse, as she spoke, and she went meekly away, Mrs. Brookes closing the door behind her with an unspoken reflection on the uselessness of girls, who, whenever anything is the matter, can do nothing but cry.
The night gradually fell upon Poynings--the soft, sweet, early summer night. It crept into the sick-room, and overshadowed the still form upon the bed--the form whose stillness was to be succeeded by the fierce unrest, the torturing vague effort of fever; it closed over the stern pompous master of Poynings, wakeful and sorely troubled. It darkened the pretty chamber, decorated with a thousand girlish treasures and simple adornments, in which Clare Carruthers was striving sorely with the first fierce trial of her prosperous young life. When it was at its darkest and deepest, the girl's swollen weary eyelids closed, conquered by the irresistible mighty benefactor of the young who suffer. Then, if any eye could have pierced the darkness and looked at her as she lay sleeping, the stamp of a great fear upon her face even in her slumber, and her breast shaken by frequent heavy sighs, it would have been seen that one hand was hidden under the pillow, and the fair cheek pressed tightly down upon it, for better security. That hand was closed upon three letters, severally addressed to the advertising department of three of the daily newspapers. The contents, which were uniform, had cost the girl hours of anxious and agonizing thoughts. They were very simple, and were as follows, accompanied by the sum which she supposed their insertion would cost, very liberally estimated:
"The gentleman who showed a lady a sprig of myrtle on last Saturday is earnestly entreated by her not to revisit the place where he met her. He will inevitably be recognized."
"God forgive me if I am doing wrong in this!" Clare Carruthers had said with her last waking consciousness. "God forgive me, but I must save him if I can!"