“We’ll talk by-and-by. I’m ill—I’m horribly ill. Come away.”
“Come, then, if ye like best, ma’am,” said Mildred Tarnley, leading her through the kitchen, and by the outer door into the open air, but she had hardly got a step into the yard when the young lady, holding her fast, stopped short in renewed terrors.
“Oh, Mildred, if she follows us, if she overtook us out here?”
“Hoot, ma’am, who are ye afeard on? Is it that crazy blind woman, or who?”
“Oh, Mildred, yes, it is she. Oh, Mildred, where shall we go, where can I hide myself? there’s nowhere safe.”
“Now you’re just drivin’ yourself distracted, you be. What for need ye fear her? She’s crazy, I’ll not deny, but she’s blind too, and she can’t follow ye here, if she was so minded. Why she couldn’t cross the stile, nor follow ye through a spinnie. But see, ye’ve nout but yer dressin’ gown over yer night clothes, and yer bare feet. Odd’s I’ll not go wi’ ye—ye’ll come back, and if ye must come abroad, ye’ll get yer cloaks and your shoon.”
“No, no, no, Mildred, I’ll go as I am,” cried the terrified lady, at the same time hurrying onward to the yard door.
“Well,” said the old woman following, “wilful lass will ha’ her way, but ye’ll clap this ower your shouthers.”
And she placed her own shawl on them, and together they passed into the lonely woodlands that, spreading upward from the glen of Carwell, embower the deep ravine that flanks the side of the Grange, and widening and deepening, enter the kindred shadows of the glen.
XXXVII
A Messenger
Alice had not gone far when she was seized with a great shivering—the mediate process by which from high hysterical tension, nature brings down the nerves again to their accustomed tone.
The air was soft and still, and the faint gray of morning was already changing the darkness into its peculiar twilight.
“Ye’ll be better presently, dear,” said the old woman, with unaccustomed kindness. “There, there, ye’ll be nothing the worse when a’s done, and ye’ll have a cup o’ tea when ye come back.”
Under the great old trees near the ivied wall which screens the court is a stone bench, and on this old Mildred was constrained to place her.
“There, there, there, rest a bit—rest a little bit. Hih! cryin’—well, cry if ye will; but ye’ll ha’ more to thank God than to cry for, if all be as I guess.”
Alice cried on with convulsive sobs, starting every now and then, with a wild glance towards the yard gate, and grasping the old woman’s arm. In a very few minutes this paroxysm subsided, and she wept quietly.
“ ’Twas you, ma’am, that cried out, I take it—hey? Frightened mayhap?”
“I was—yes—I—I’ll wait a little, and tell you by-and-by—horribly—horribly.”
“Ye needn’t be afeered here, and me beside ye, ma’am, and daylight a-comin’, and I think I could gi’e a sharp guess at the matter. Ye saw her ladyship, I do suppose? The old soger, ma’am—ay, that’s a sight might frighten a body—like a spirit a’most—a great white-faced, blind devil.”
“Who is she? how did she come? She tried to kill me. Oh! Mrs. Tarnley, I’m so terrified!”
And with these words Alice began to cry and tremble afresh.
“Hey! try to kill ye, did she? I’m glad o’ that—right glad o’t; ’twill rid us o’ trouble, ma’am. But la! think o’ that! And did she actually raise her hand to you!”
“Oh yes, Mrs. Tarnley—frightful. I’m saved by a miracle—I don’t know how—the mercy of God only.”
She was clinging to Mrs. Tarnley with a fast and trembling grasp.
“Zooks! the lass is frightened. Ye ha’ seen sights tonight, young lady, ye’ll remember. Young folk loves pleasure, and the world, and themselves ower well to trouble their heads about death or judgment, if the Lord in His mercy didn’t shake ’em up from their dreams and their sins. ‘Awake thou that sleepest,’ says the Word, callin’ loud in a drunken ear, at dead o’ night, wi’ the house all round afire, as the parson says. He’s a good man, though I may ha’ seen better, in old days in Carwell pulpit. So, ’tis all for good, and in place o’ crying ye should be praisin’ God for startlin’ ye out o’ your carnal sleep, and makin’ ye think o’ Him, and see yourself as ye are, and not according to the flatteries o’ your husband and your own vanity. Ye’ll pardon me, but truth is truth, and God’s truth first of all; and who’ll tell it ye if them as is within hearin’ won’t open their lips, and I don’t see that Mr. Charles troubles his head much about the matter.”
“He is so noble, and always my guardian angel. Oh, Mrs. Tarnley, tonight I must have perished if it had not been for him; he is always my best friend, and so unselfish and noble.”
“Well that’s good,” said Mildred Tarnley, coldly. “But I’m thinkin’ something ought to be done wi’ that catamountain in there, and strike while the iron’s hot, and they’ll never drive home that nail ye’ll find—more like to go off when all’s done wi’ her pocket full o’ money. ’Tis a sin, while so many an honest soul wants, and I’ll take that just into my own old hands, I’m thinkin’, and sarve her out as she would better women.”
“Isn’t she mad, Mrs. Tarnley?” asked Alice.
“And if she’s mad, to the madhouse wi’ her, an’ if she’s not, where’s the gallows high enough for her, the dangerous harridan? For, one way or t’other, the fiend’s in her, and the sooner judgment overtakes her, and she’s in her coffin, the sooner the devil’s laid, and the better for honest folk.”
“If she is mad, it accounts for everything; but I feel as if I never could enter that house again; and oh! Mrs. Tarnley, you mustn’t leave me. Oh, heavens! what’s that?”
It was no great matter—Mrs. Tarnley had
