A Dark Night's Work (11 page)

But one night before this, when all windows and doors stood open to admit
the least breath that stirred the sultry July air, a servant on velvet
tiptoe had stolen up to Ellinor's open door, and had beckoned out of the
chamber of the sleeper the ever watchful nurse, Miss Monro.

"A gentleman wants you," were all the words the housemaid dared to say so
close to the bedroom. And softly, softly Miss Monro stepped down the
stairs, into the drawing-room; and there she saw Mr. Livingstone. But
she did not know him; she had never seen him before.

"I have travelled all day. I heard she was ill—was dying. May I just
have one more look at her? I will not speak; I will hardly breathe. Only
let me see her once again!"

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I don't know who you are; and if you mean
Miss Wilkins, by 'her,' she is very ill, but we hope not dying. She was
very ill, indeed, yesterday; very dangerously ill, I may say, but she is
having a good sleep, in consequence of a soporific medicine, and we are
really beginning to hope—"

But just here Miss Monro's hand was taken, and, to her infinite surprise,
was kissed before she could remember how improper such behaviour was.

"God bless you, madam, for saying so. But if she sleeps, will you let me
see her? it can do no harm, for I will tread as if on egg shells; and I
have come so far—if I might just look on her sweet face. Pray, madam,
let me just have one sight of her. I will not ask for more."

But he did ask for more after he had had his wish. He stole upstairs
after Miss Monro, who looked round reproachfully at him if even a
nightingale sang, or an owl hooted in the trees outside the open windows,
yet who paused to say herself, outside Mr. Wilkins's chamber door,

"Her father's room; he has not been in bed for six nights, till to-night;
pray do not make a noise to waken him." And on into the deep stillness
of the hushed room, where one clear ray of hidden lamp-light shot athwart
the door, where a watcher, breathing softly, sat beside the bed—where
Ellinor's dark head lay motionless on the white pillow, her face almost
as white, her form almost as still. You might have heard a pin fall.
After a while he moved to withdraw. Miss Monro, jealous of every sound,
followed him, with steps all the more heavy because they were taken with
so much care, down the stairs, back into the drawing-room. By the bed-
candle flaring in the draught, she saw that there was the glittering mark
of wet tears on his cheek; and she felt, as she said afterwards, "sorry
for the young man." And yet she urged him to go, for she knew that she
might be wanted upstairs. He took her hand, and wrung it hard.

"Thank you. She looked so changed—oh! she looked as though she were
dead. You will write—Herbert Livingstone, Langham Vicarage, Yorkshire;
you will promise me to write. If I could do anything for her, but I can
but pray. Oh, my darling; my darling! and I have no right to be with
her."

"Go away, there's a good young man," said Miss Monro, all the more
pressing to hurry him out by the front door, because she was afraid of
his emotion overmastering him, and making him noisy in his
demonstrations. "Yes, I will write; I will write, never fear!" and she
bolted the door behind him, and was thankful.

Two minutes afterwards there was a low tap; she undid the fastenings, and
there he stood, pale in the moonlight.

"Please don't tell her I came to ask about her; she might not like it."

"No, no! not I! Poor creature, she's not likely to care to hear anything
this long while. She never roused at Mr. Corbet's name."

"Mr. Corbet's!" said Livingstone, below his breath, and he turned and
went away; this time for good.

But Ellinor recovered. She knew she was recovering, when day after day
she felt involuntary strength and appetite return. Her body seemed
stronger than her will; for that would have induced her to creep into her
grave, and shut her eyes for ever on this world, so full of troubles.

She lay, for the most part, with her eyes closed, very still and quiet;
but she thought with the intensity of one who seeks for lost peace, and
cannot find it. She began to see that if in the mad impulses of that mad
nightmare of horror, they had all strengthened each other, and dared to
be frank and open, confessing a great fault, a greater disaster, a
greater woe—which in the first instance was hardly a crime—their future
course, though sad and sorrowful, would have been a simple and
straightforward one to tread. But it was not for her to undo what was
done, and to reveal the error and shame of a father. Only she, turning
anew to God, in the solemn and quiet watches of the night, made a
covenant, that in her conduct, her own personal individual life, she
would act loyally and truthfully. And as for the future, and all the
terrible chances involved in it, she would leave it in His hands—if,
indeed (and here came in the Tempter), He would watch over one whose life
hereafter must seem based upon a lie. Her only plea, offered "standing
afar off" was, "The lie is said and done and over—it was not for my own
sake. Can filial piety be so overcome by the rights of justice and
truth, as to demand of me that I should reveal my father's guilt."

Her father's severe sharp punishment began. He knew why she suffered,
what made her young strength falter and tremble, what made her life seem
nigh about to be quenched in death. Yet he could not take his sorrow and
care in the natural manner. He was obliged to think how every word and
deed would be construed. He fancied that people were watching him with
suspicious eyes, when nothing was further from their thoughts. For once
let the "public" of any place be possessed by an idea, it is more
difficult to dislodge it than any one imagines who has not tried. If Mr.
Wilkins had gone into Hamley market-place, and proclaimed himself guilty
of the manslaughter of Mr. Dunster—nay, if he had detailed all the
circumstances—the people would have exclaimed, "Poor man, he is crazed
by this discovery of the unworthiness of the man he trusted so; and no
wonder—it was such a thing to have done—to have defrauded his partner
to such an extent, and then have made off to America!"

For many small circumstances, which I do not stop to detail here, went
far to prove this, as we know, unfounded supposition; and Mr. Wilkins,
who was known, from his handsome boyhood, through his comely manhood, up
to the present time, by all the people in Hamley, was an object of
sympathy and respect to every one who saw him, as he passed by, old, and
lorn, and haggard before his time, all through the evil conduct of one,
London-bred, who was as a hard, unlovely stranger to the popular mind of
this little country town.

Mr. Wilkins's own servants liked him. The workings of his temptations
were such as they could understand. If he had been hot-tempered he had
also been generous, or I should rather say careless and lavish with his
money. And now that he was cheated and impoverished by his partner's
delinquency, they thought it no wonder that he drank long and deep in the
solitary evenings which he passed at home. It was not that he was
without invitations. Every one came forward to testify their respect for
him by asking him to their houses. He had probably never been so
universally popular since his father's death. But, as he said, he did
not care to go into society while his daughter was so ill—he had no
spirits for company.

But if any one had cared to observe his conduct at home, and to draw
conclusions from it, they could have noticed that, anxious as he was
about Ellinor, he rather avoided than sought her presence, now that her
consciousness and memory were restored. Nor did she ask for, or wish for
him. The presence of each was a burden to the other. Oh, sad and woeful
night of May—overshadowing the coming summer months with gloom and
bitter remorse!

Still youth prevailed over all. Ellinor got well, as I have said, even
when she would fain have died. And the afternoon came when she left her
room. Miss Monro would gladly have made a festival of her recovery, and
have had her conveyed into the unused drawing-room. But Ellinor begged
that she might be taken into the library—into the schoolroom—anywhere
(thought she) not looking on the side of the house on the flower-garden,
which she had felt in all her illness as a ghastly pressure lying within
sight of those very windows, through which the morning sun streamed right
upon her bed—like the accusing angel, bringing all hidden things to
light.

And when Ellinor was better still, when the Bath-chair had been sent up
for her use, by some kindly old maid, out of Hamley, she still petitioned
that it might be kept on the lawn or town side of the house, away from
the flower-garden.

One day she almost screamed, when, as she was going to the front door,
she saw Dixon standing ready to draw her, instead of Fletcher the servant
who usually went. But she checked all demonstration of feeling; although
it was the first time she had seen him since he and she and one more had
worked their hearts out in hard bodily labour.

He looked so stern and ill! Cross, too, which she had never seen him
before.

As soon as they were out of immediate sight of the windows, she asked him
to stop, forcing herself to speak to him.

"Dixon, you look very poorly," she said, trembling as she spoke.

"Ay!" said he. "We didn't think much of it at the time, did we, Miss
Nelly? But it'll be the death on us, I'm thinking. It has aged me above
a bit. All my fifty years afore were but as a forenoon of child's play
to that night. Measter, too—I could a-bear a good deal, but measter
cuts through the stable-yard, and past me, wi'out a word, as if I was
poison, or a stinking foumart. It's that as is worst, Miss Nelly, it
is."

And the poor man brushed some tears from his eyes with the back of his
withered, furrowed hand. Ellinor caught the infection, and cried
outright, sobbed like a child, even while she held out her little white
thin hand to his grasp. For as soon as he saw her emotion, he was
penitent for what he had said.

"Don't now—don't," was all he could think of to say.

"Dixon!" said she at length, "you must not mind it. You must try not to
mind it. I see he does not like to be reminded of that, even by seeing
me. He tries never to be alone with me. My poor old Dixon, it has
spoilt my life for me; for I don't think he loves me any more."

She sobbed as if her heart would break; and now it was Dixon's turn to be
comforter.

"Ah, dear, my blessing, he loves you above everything. It's only he
can't a-bear the sight of us, as is but natural. And if he doesn't fancy
being alone with you, there's always one as does, and that's a comfort at
the worst of times. And don't ye fret about what I said a minute ago. I
were put out because measter all but pushed me out of his way this
morning, without never a word. But I were an old fool for telling ye.
And I've really forgotten why I told Fletcher I'd drag ye a bit about to-
day. Th' gardener is beginning for to wonder as you don't want to see
th' annuals and bedding-out things as you were so particular about in
May. And I thought I'd just have a word wi' ye, and then if you'd let
me, we'd go together just once round the flower-garden, just to say
you've been, you know, and to give them chaps a bit of praise. You'll
only have to look on the beds, my pretty, and it must be done some time.
So come along!"

He began to pull resolutely in the direction of the flower-garden.
Ellinor bit her lips to keep in the cry of repugnance that rose to them.
As Dixon stopped to unlock the door, he said:

"It's not hardness, nothing like it; I've waited till I heerd you were
better; but it's in for a penny in for a pound wi' us all; and folk may
talk; and bless your little brave heart, you'll stand a deal for your
father's sake, and so will I, though I do feel it above a bit, when he
puts out his hand as if to keep me off, and I only going to speak to him
about Clipper's knees; though I'll own I had wondered many a day when I
was to have the good-morrow master never missed sin' he were a boy
till—Well! and now you've seen the beds, and can say they looked mighty
pretty, and is done all as you wished; and we're got out again, and
breathing fresher air than yon sunbaked hole, with its smelling flowers,
not half so wholesome to snuff at as good stable-dung."

So the good man chatted on; not without the purpose of giving Ellinor
time to recover herself; and partly also to drown his own cares, which
lay heavier on his heart than he could say. But he thought himself
rewarded by Ellinor's thanks, and warm pressure of his hard hand as she
got out at the front door, and bade him good-by.

The break to her days of weary monotony was the letters she constantly
received from Mr. Corbet. And yet here again lurked the sting. He was
all astonishment and indignation at Mr. Dunster's disappearance, or
rather flight, to America. And now that she was growing stronger, he did
not scruple to express curiosity respecting the details, never doubting
but that she was perfectly acquainted with much that he wanted to know;
although he had too much delicacy to question her on the point which was
most important of all in his eyes, namely, how far it had affected Mr.
Wilkins's worldly prospects; for the report prevalent in Hamley had
reached London, that Mr. Dunster had made away with, or carried off,
trust property to a considerable extent, for all which Mr. Wilkins would
of course be liable.

It was hard work for Ralph Corbet to keep from seeking direct information
on this head from Mr. Ness, or, indeed, from Mr. Wilkins himself. But he
restrained himself, knowing that in August he should be able to make all
these inquiries personally. Before the end of the long vacation he had
hoped to marry Ellinor: that was the time which had been planned by them
when they had met in the early spring before her illness and all this
misfortune happened. But now, as he wrote to his father, nothing could
be definitely arranged until he had paid his visit to Hamley, and seen
the state of affairs.