As she spoke old Dulcibella appeared, and with a face of deep concern waddled as fast as she could toward her young mistress, raising her hands and eyes from time to time as she approached.
As she drew nearer she made a solemn thanksgiving, and—
“Oh! my child, my child, thank God you’re well. I was a’most ready to drop in a swound when I came into your room, just now, everything knocked topsy-turvey, and a door cut in the wall, and all in a litter, I couldn’t know where I was, and someone a-bleedin’ all across the floor, and one of the big, green-handled knives on the floor—Lord a’ mercy on us—with the blade bent and blood about it. I never was so frightened. I thought my senses was a-leavin’ me, and I couldn’t tell what I might see next, and I ready to drop down on the floor wi’ fright. My darling child—my precious—Lord love it, and here it was, barefooted, and but half clad, and—come in ye must, dear, ’tis enough to kill ye.”
“I can scarcely remember anything, Dulcibella, only one thing—oh! I’m so terrified.”
“Come in, darling, you’ll lose your life if you stay here as you are, and what was it, dear, and who did you see?”
“A woman—that dreadful blind woman, who came in at the new door; I never saw her before.”
“Well, dear! Oh, Miss Alice, darling, I couldn’t a’ believed, and thank God you’re safe after all; that’s she I heard a screechin’ as strong as a dozen—and frightful words, as well as I could hear, to come from any woman’s lips. Lord help us.”
“Where is she now?”
“Somewhere in the front of the house, darlin’, screechin’ and laughin’ I thought, but heaven only knows.”
“She’s mad, Mrs. Tarnley says, and Mr. Fairfield said so too. Master Charles is come—my darling Ry. Oh! Dulcibella, how grateful I should be. What could I have done if he hadn’t?”
So Dulcibella persuaded her to come into the yard, and so, through the scullery door, at which Mildred stood, having secured all other access to the kitchen. So in she came, awfully frightened to find herself again in the house, but was not her husband there, and help at hand, and the doors secured?
XXXVIII
Unreasonable Bertha
Her husband was at hand—that is to say, under the same roof, and at that moment in the room in which the blind woman was now sitting, bleeding from head and hand, and smiling as she talked, with the false light of a malignant irony.
“So, husband and wife are met again! And what have you to say after so long a time?”
“I’ve nothing to say. Let my deeds speak. I’ve given you year by year fully half my income.”
She laughed scornfully, and exclaimed merely—
“Magnificent man!”
“Miserable pittance it is, but the more miserable, the harder the sacrifice for me. I don’t say I have been able to do much; but I have done more than my means warrant, and I don’t understand what you propose to yourself by laying yourself out to torment and embarrass me. What the devil do you follow me about for? Do you think I’m fool enough to be bullied?”
“A fine question from Charles Vairfield of Wyvern to his wife!” she observed with a pallid simper.
“Wife and husband are terms very easily pronounced,” said he.
“And relations very easily made,” she rejoined.
He was leaning with his shoulder against the high mantelpiece, and looking upon her with a countenance in which you might have seen disdain and fear mingling with something of compunction.
“Relations very easily made, and still more easily affected,” he replied. “Come, Bertha, there is no use in quarrelling over points of law. Past is past, as Leonora says. If I have wronged you anything I am sorry. I’ve tried to make amends; and though many a fellow would have been tired out long ago, I continue to give you proofs that I am not.”
“That is a sort of benevolence,” she said, in her own language, “which may as well be voluntary, for if it be not, the magistrates will compel it.”
“The magistrates are neither fools nor tyrants. You’ll make nothing of the magistrates. You have no rights, and you know it.”
“An odd country where a wife has no rights.”
“Come, Bertha, there is no use in picking a quarrel. While you take me quietly you have your share, and a good deal more. You used to be reasonable.”
“A reasonable wife, I suppose, gives up her position, her character, her prospects, whenever it answers her husband to sacrifice these trifles for his villainous pleasures. Your English wives must be meek souls indeed if they like it. I don’t hear they are such lambs though.”
“I’m not going to argue law points, as I said before. Lawyers are the proper persons to do that. You used to be reasonable, Bertha—where’s the good in pushing things to extremes?”
“What a gentle creature you are,” she laughed, “and how persuasive!”
“I’m a quiet fellow enough, I believe, as men go, but I’m not persuasive, and I know it. I wish I were.”
“Those whom you have persuaded once are not likely to be persuaded again. Your persuasions are not always lucky. Are they?”
“You want to quarrel about everything. You want to leave no possible point of agreement.”
“Things are at a bad pass when husband and wife are so.”
Charles looked at her angrily for a moment, and then down to the floor, and he whistled a few bars of a tune.
“What do you whistle for?” she demanded.
“Come, Bertha, don’t be foolish.”
“You were once a gentleman. It is a blackguard who whistles in reply to a lady’s words,” she said, on a sudden stretching out her hand
