“Help me to my bed—support me—get off my things,” she moaned and mumbled, and at last lay down with a great groaning sigh.
“What am I to do with her now?” thought Mrs. Tarnley, who was doubtful whether in this state she could be safely left to herself.
But the patient set her at ease upon the point.
“Get your ear down,” she whispered, “near, near—you need not stay any longer—only—one thing—the closet with the long row of pegs and the three presses in it, that lies between her room and mine, I remember it well—it isn’t open—I shouldn’t like her to find me here.”
“No, ma’am, it ain’t open, the doors were papered over, this room and hers, as I told you, when the rooms was done up.”
The old soldier sighed and whispered—
“My head is very bad, make no noise, dear, don’t move the tray, don’t touch anything—leave me to myself, and I’ll sleep till eleven o’clock tomorrow morning; but go out softly, and then, no noise, for my sleep,” groaned this huge woman, “is a bird’s sleep—a bird’s sleep, and a pin dropping wakes me, a mouse stirring wakes me—oh—oh—oh. That’s all.” Glad to be dismissed on these easy terms, Mildred Tarnley bid her softly good night, having left her basket with her sal volatile, and all other comforts, on the table at her bedside.
And so, softly she stole on tiptoe out of the room, and closed her door, waiting for a moment to clear her head, and be quite sure that the “Dutchwoman,” whom they very much hated and feared, was actually established in her bedroom at Carwell Grange.
XXXI
News from Cressley Common
A pretty medley was revolving in old Mildred’s brain as she stood outside this door, on the gallery. The epileptic old soldier, the puce gros de Naples, Tom on outpost duty on Cressley Common—had he come back? Charles Fairfield, perhaps, in the house, and that foolish poor young wife in her room, in the centre, and herself the object of all this manoeuvring and conspiring; quite unconscious. Mildred had a good many wires to her fingers just now; could she possibly work them all and keep the show going?
She was listening now, wondering whether Master Charles had arrived, wondering whether the young lady was asleep, and wondering, most of all, why she had been fool enough to meddle in other people’s affairs. “What the dickens was it to her if they was all in kingdom come? If Mildred was a-roastin’ they wouldn’t, not one of ’em, walk across the yard there, to take her off the spit—la, bless you, not a foot.”
Mildred was troubled about many things. Among others, what was the meaning of those oracular appeals of the Dutchwoman in which she had seemed to know something of the real state of things.
Down went Mildred Tarnley, softly still, for she would not risk waking Alice, and at the foot of the second staircase she paused again.
All was quiet, she peeped into Tom’s little room, under the staircase. It was still empty. Into the kitchen she went, nothing had been stirred there.
From habit she trotted about, and settled and unsettled some of the scanty ironmongery and earthenware, and peeped, with her candle aloft, into this corner and that, and she removed the smoothing-iron that stood on the window stool, holding the shutters close, and peeped into the paved yard, tufted with grass, high over which the solemn trees were drooping.
Then, candle in hand, the fidgety old woman visited the back door, the latch was in its place, and she turned about and visited the panelled sitting-room. The smell of flowers was there, and on the little spider-table was Alice’s work-box, and some little muslin clippings and bits of thread and tape, the relics of that evening’s solitary work over the little toilet on which her pretty fingers and sad eyes were now always employed.
Well, there was no sign of Master Charles here; so with a little more pottering and sniffing, out she went, and again to the back door, which softly she opened, and she toddled across the uneven pavement to the back door, and looked out, and walked forth upon the narrow road, that, darkened with thick trees, overhangs the edge of the ravine.
Here she listened, and listened in vain. There was nothing but the soft rush of the leaves overhead in the faint visitings of the night air, and across the glen at intervals came that ghastliest of sounds, between a long-drawn hiss and shiver, from a lonely owl.
Interrupted at intervals by this freezing sound, the old woman listened and muttered now and again a testy word or two. What was to be done if, by any mischance or blunder of Tom’s, the master should thunder his summons at the hall-door? Down of course would fly his young wife to let him in, and be clasped in his arms, while from the low window of the Dutchwoman that evil tenant might overhear every word that passed, and almost touch their heads with her down-stretched hand.
A pretty scene it would lead to, and agreeable consequences to Mildred herself.
“The woman’s insane; she’s an evil spirit; many a time she would have brained me in a start of anger if I hadn’t been sharp. The mark of the cut glass decanter she flung at my head is in the door-case at the foot of the stairs this minute like the scar of a billhook, the mad beast. I thank God she’s blind, though there’s an end o’ them pranks, anyhow. But she’s a limb o’ the evil one, and where there’s a will there’s a way, and blind though she be, I would not trust her.”
She walked two or three steps slowly, toward Cressley Common, from which direction she expected the approach of Charles Fairfield.
No wonder Mildred was fidgeted, there were so many disasters on the cards. If she could but see Charles Fairfield something at least might
