A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black
ladder had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious
in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen added
to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties of this
existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death. The
inequality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say that the child of a King and the
child of a Weaver were born to-night in the same moment, what was that
disparity, to the death of any human creature who was serviceable to, or beloved
by, another, while this abandoned woman lived on!
From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with suspended
breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door, opened it, and so into
the room.
Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.
She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight of
his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is to say, he
saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be she; but Rachael's
hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened from his eyes. Her
disgraceful garments were removed, and some of Rachael's were in the room.
Everything was in its place and order as he had always kept it, the little fire
was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept. It appeared to him that he
saw all this in Rachael's face, and looked at nothing besides. While looking at
it, it was shut out from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes;
but not before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes
were filled too.
She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was quiet
there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.
'I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late.'
'I ha' been walking up an' down.'
'I thought so. But 'tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very heavy,
and the wind has risen.'
The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the chimney,
and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not to have known it
was blowing!
'I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady came round for me at
dinner-time. There was some one here that needed looking to, she said. And 'deed
she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and bruised.'
He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.
'I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked with
me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married her when I
was her friend - '
He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.
'And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that
'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want of
aid. Thou knowest who said, "Let him who is without sin among you cast the first
stone at her!" There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast
the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.'
'O Rachael, Rachael!'
'Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!' she said, in
compassionate accents. 'I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind.'
The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the
self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She steeped
a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid from a bottle,
and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The three-legged table had been
drawn close to the bedside, and on it there were two bottles. This was one.
It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his eyes,
could read what was printed on it in large letters. He turned of a deadly hue,
and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.
'I will stay here, Stephen,' said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat, 'till
the bells go Three. 'Tis to be done again at three, and then she may be left
till morning.'
'But thy rest agen to-morrow's work, my dear.'
'I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it. 'Tis
thou who art in need of rest - so white and tired. Try to sleep in the chair
there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can well believe.
To-morrow's work is far harder for thee than for me.'
He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as if
his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had cast it out;
she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from himself.
'She don't know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I have
spoken to her times and again, but she don't notice! 'Tis as well so. When she
comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I can, and she never
the wiser.'
'How long, Rachael, is 't looked for, that she'll be so?'
'Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.'
His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing him
to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet. 'No,' he said,
'it was not that. He had had a fright.'
'A fright?'
'Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When I - ' It
seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf, as he pressed
his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it were palsied.
'Stephen!'
She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.
'No! Don't, please; don't. Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me see
thee, a' so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I see thee when I coom
in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never, never!'
He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a time
he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and his head upon
that hand, could look towards Rachael. Seen across the dim candle with his
moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head. He
could have believed she had. He did believe it, as the noise without shook the
window, rattled at the door below, and went about the house clamouring and
lamenting.
'When she gets better, Stephen, 'tis to be hoped she'll leave thee to thyself
again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now. And now I shall
keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.'
He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but, by
slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased to hear
it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the voices of the
day (his own included) saying what had been really said. Even this imperfect
consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a long, troubled dream.
He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set - but
she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his imaginary
happiness - stood in the church being married. While the ceremony was
performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some whom he knew to be
living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, succeeded by the
shining of a tremendous light. It broke from one line in the table of
commandments at the altar, and illuminated the building with the words. They
were sounded through the church, too, as if there were voices in the fiery
letters. Upon this, the whole appearance before him and around him changed, and
nothing was left as it had been, but himself and the clergyman. They stood in
the daylight before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could
have been brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he
thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one pitying
or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a
raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at the shape the loom took,
and hearing the burial service distinctly read, he knew that he was there to
suffer death. In an instant what he stood on fell below him, and he was gone.
- Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that he
knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by some means,
and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in this world or the
next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to look on Rachael's face
or hear her voice. Wandering to and fro, unceasingly, without hope, and in
search of he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was
the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape
which everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or
later. The object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by
any one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led them
out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where it stood, if
he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be secreted, and got them
out into the streets, the very chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and
round them was the printed word.
The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and the
larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of his
room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes had closed upon it.
Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the chair by the bed. She sat
wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table stood in the same place, close
by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance, was the shape
so often repeated.
He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it
moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the curtain moved
more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up.
With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked all
round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair. Her eyes
returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a shade, while she
looked into it. Again they went all round the room, scarcely heeding Rachael if
at all, and returned to that corner. He thought, as she once more shaded them -
not so much looking at him, as looking for him with a brutish instinct that he
was there - that no single trace was left in those debauched features, or in the
mind that went along with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years
before. But that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have
believed her to be the same.
All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and powerless,
except to watch her.
Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she sat
for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting on them.
Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now, for the first time,
her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.
Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of last
night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her greedy hand. She
drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while considering which of the two
bottles she should choose. Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle
that had swift and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the
cork with her teeth.
Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be real,
and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!
She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very
cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A moment and
she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come about her with its
utmost power. But in that moment Rachael started up with a suppressed cry. The
creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair; but Rachael had the cup.
Stephen broke out of his chair. 'Rachael, am I wakin' or dreamin' this
dreadfo' night?'
''Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep, myself. 'Tis near three. Hush! I
hear the bells.'
The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They listened,
and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she was, noted the
disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her forehead, and felt
assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been awake. She held the cup in
her hand even now.
'I thought it must be near three,' she said, calmly pouring from the cup into
the basin, and steeping the linen as before. 'I am thankful I stayed! 'Tis done
now, when I have put this on. There! And now she's quiet again. The few drops in
the basin I'll pour away, for 'tis bad stuff to leave about, though ever so
little of it.' As she spoke, she drained the basin into the ashes of the fire,
and broke the bottle on the hearth.
She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before going
out into the wind and rain.
'Thou'lt let me walk wi' thee at this hour, Rachael?'
'No, Stephen. 'Tis but a minute, and I'm home.'
'Thou'rt not fearfo';' he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the
door; 'to leave me alone wi' her!'
As she looked at him, saying, 'Stephen?' he went down on his knee before her,
on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.
'Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!'
'I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not like me.
Between them, and a working woman fu' of faults, there is a deep gulf set. My
little sister is among them, but she is changed.'
She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they fell
again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.
'Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak'st me humbly wishfo' to be more
like thee, and fearfo' to lose thee when this life is ower, and a' the muddle
cleared awa'. Thou'rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my soul alive!'
She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his hand,
and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of his face.
'I coom home desp'rate. I coom home wi'out a hope, and mad wi' thinking that
when I said a word o' complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand. I told thee
I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I never hurt a livin'
creetur; but happenin' so suddenly upon 't, I thowt, "How can I say what I might
ha' done to myseln, or her, or both!"'
She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him from
saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding them, and still
clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:
'But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha' seen thee, aw this night.
In my troublous sleep I ha' known thee still to be there. Evermore I will see
thee there. I nevermore will see her or think o' her, but thou shalt be beside
her. I nevermore will see or think o' anything that angers me, but thou, so much
better than me, shalt be by th' side on't. And so I will try t' look t' th'
time, and so I will try t' trust t' th' time, when thou and me at last shall
walk together far awa', beyond the deep gulf, in th' country where thy little
sister is.'
He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him good
night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.
The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still
blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent itself
or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood bare-headed in the
road, watching her quick disappearance. As the shining stars were to the heavy
candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged fancy of this man, to the
common experiences of his life.
|