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room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excited imagination, should be
waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such a fancy of his being in the
next room, hiding - though she knew quite well what a distempered fancy it
was, and had no belief in it - that she forced herself to go there, for her
own conviction. But in vain. The room resumed its shadowy terrors, the
moment she left it; and she had no more power to divest herself of these
vague impressions of dread, than if they had been stone giants, rooted in
the solid earth.
It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her head
upon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in the
gloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntary cry.
Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for an instant,
as searching for an object; then the eyes rested on herself, and lighted up.
'Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!' and the hand rattled on
the glass.
She recognised immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whom
she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraid of
her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a little from
the window, stood undecided and alarmed.
'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful - quiet - humble -
anything you like. But let me speak to you.'
The vehement manner of the entreaty, the earnest expression of the
face, the trembling of the two hands that were raised imploringly, a certain
dread and terror in the voice akin to her own condition at the moment,
prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and opened it.
'May I come in, or shall I speak here?' said the woman, catching at her
hand.
'What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?'
'Not much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted
now to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me
come in, if you can trust me for this once!'
Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the firelight of the
little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her clothes.
'Sit there,' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and look at me. You
remember me?'
'I do.'
'You remember what I told you I had been, and where I came from, ragged
and lame, with the fierce wind and weather beating on my head?'
'Yes.'
'You know how I came back that night, and threw your money in the dirt,
and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am l less earnest
now, than I was then?'
'If what you ask,' said Harriet, gently, 'is forgiveness - '
'But it's not!' returned the other, with a proud, fierce look 'What I
ask is to be believed. Now you shall judge if I am worthy of belief, both as
I was, and as I am.'
Still upon her knees, and with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire
shining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tress of
which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, and
thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:
'When I was young and pretty, and this,' plucking contemptuously at the
hair she held, was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admired enough,
my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found out my
merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and poor, and
thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever thought that of
a daughter yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did - it's never done, we all
know - and that shows that the only instances of mothers bringing up their
daughters wrong, and evil coming of it, are among such miserable folks as
us.'
Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of
having any auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long
tress of hair tight round and round her hand.
'What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched marriages don't come of
such things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and
ruin came on me - came on me.
Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to
Harriet's face, she said:
'I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought
of all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I say. I
was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and carelessly than
even such things are. By whose hand do you think?'
'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet.
'Why do you tremble?' rejoined Alice, with an eager look. 'His usage
made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and lower yet. I
was concerned in a robbery - in every part of it but the gains - and was
found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend, without a penny. Though I
was but a girl, I would have gone to Death, sooner than ask him for a word,
if a word of his could have saved me. I would! To any death that could have
been invented. But my mother, covetous always, sent to him in my name, told
the true story of my case, and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last
gift - for not so many pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do
you think, who snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he
believed, at his feet, and left me without even this poor sign of
remembrance; well satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach
of farther trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do
you think?'
'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.
'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm' and
looking in her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was your
brother James.
Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the
eager look that rested on them.
'When I knew you were his sister - which was on that night - I came
back, weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could
have travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I
could have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that
I was earnest in all that?'
'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'
'Since then,' said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same
look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In the
broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung
into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud
man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him
to that man?'
'Information!' repeated Harriet.
'What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knew
the manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of his flight
were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word by word,
before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at the time,
looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till it was scarcely
human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit? What if I knew,
now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must, in so many
hours, come up with him?'
'Remove your hand!' said Harriet, recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch is
dreadful to me!'
'I have done this,' pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless
of the interruption. 'Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe
what I am saying?'
'I fear I must. Let my arm go!'
'Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must
have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?'
'Dreadful!' said Harriet.
'Then when you see me now,' said Alice hoarsely, 'here again, kneeling
quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your
face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and
that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to
speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself
all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason, and
wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them
come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen
him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better.
'How can it be prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet.
'All night long,' pursued the other, hurriedly, 'I had dreams of him -
and yet I didn't sleep - in his blood. All day, I have had him near me.
'What can I do?' cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.
'If there is anyone who'll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose
no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?'
'Yes.'
'Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that
he doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is
on the road - I know he is! - and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while
there is time - if there is time - and not to meet him yet. A month or so
will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere
but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for
himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without.'
The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face,
and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet's arm; and the place where
she had been was empty.
The Fugitives
Tea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment,
comprising some half-dozen rooms; - a dull cold hall or corridor, a
dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, or
boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one
large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two
or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of
communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain
small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses,
to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the
first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of
windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the centre, upon which the
whole four sides of the mansion looked.
An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show
of state, reigned in these rooms The walls and ceilings were gilded and
painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung in
festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and
intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from
the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the lattice-blinds (now
closely shut) were opened, and the light let in, traces were discernible
among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and
lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys
of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do.
Even night, and clusters of burning candles, could not wholly efface them,
though the general glitter threw them in the shade.
The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses,
scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one room
- that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from the
hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of open
doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its
radiance sat a beautiful woman - Edith.
She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a
little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but
the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late
repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and yet
regardless of herself and of all else, she sat wIth her dark eyes cast down,
waiting for someone.
No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thought,
beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any pause,
possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if for a moment
she released them from her control; with her nostril inflated; her hands
clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in her breast; she sat, and
waited.
At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall,
she started up, and cried 'Who's that?' The answer was in French, and two
men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.
'Who had bade them to do so?' she asked.
'Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the
apartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there for an hour, en route,
and left the letter for Madame - Madame had received it surely?'
'Yes.'
'A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been
forgotten had struck hIm;' a bald man, with a large beard from a
neighbouring restaurant; 'with despair! Monsieur had said that supper was to
be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the commands he
had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head the honour to
request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur would find
that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced.'
Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the
table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they had
finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and into the
drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the doors;
particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage in the wall.
From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side. She then came
back.
The men - the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped - had completed
their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He who had
spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be long before
Monsieur arrived?
'She couldn't say. It was all one.'
'Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant.
Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel - or a Frenchman - it was all the
same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English
nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great Heaven,
here was Monsieur. Behold him!'
In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his
gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in that
sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced Madame, and
addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife
'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!' The
bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.
Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she
was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her figure
drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable.
'Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on
these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is in his
room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.' These facts the
bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper came.
The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this
arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Let
them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes
with his own hands.
'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'
Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
night.
'But Madame - ' the bald man hinted.
'Madame,' replied Monsieur, 'had her own maid. It was enough.'
'A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!'
'I came here alone,' said Edith 'It was my choice to do so. I am well
used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me.
Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility,
proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it
after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out,
observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the
great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him, though she was
looking straight before her.
As the sound of Carker's fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last
distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled with
it, in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened;
and then came back towards her, laying a long train of footsteps through the
silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as he came along. Her hand,
for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon
the table; then she stood as she had stood before.
'How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.
'What?' she returned.
Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp
in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.
'I say,' he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most courtly smile, 'how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessarty
caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an
attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose,
though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are the most
beautiful, my love) of women.'
Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.
'I have never,' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do
to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the
reality.'
Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.
'Hard, unrelenting terms they were!' said Carker, with a smile, 'but
they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious and
more safe. Sicily shall be the Place of our retreat. In the idlest and
easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for old
slavery.'
He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.
'Stand still!' she said, 'or I shall murder you!'
The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a fire
had stopped him.
'Stand still!' she said, 'come no nearer me, upon your life!'
They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in
his face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
'Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight and
hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?'
'Do you think to frighten me,' she answered fiercely, 'from any purpose
that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the
solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here alone,
designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you,
should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am
going to tell?'
'And what is that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than
any other woman in her best humour?'
'I tell you nothing,' she returned, until you go back to that chair -
except this, once again - Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you,
if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!'
'Do you mistake me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin.
Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair.
He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled,
irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his nail
nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while
he feigned to be amused by her caprice.
She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom wIth her
hand, said:
'I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you - and you know it, while
I speak - with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that
lives.'
He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he
regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon
the floor with a muttered oath.
'How many times,' said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him' 'has
your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in
your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my
courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of
love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How often have you
fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to
take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?'
'I have no doubt, Ma'am,' he replied, 'that you have kept a good
account, and that it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor
wretch, this was well enough - '
'Why, if,' she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust,
that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, 'if all my other reasons
for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you
for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been enough to hold
their place.'
'Is that a reason why you have run away with me?' he asked her,
tauntingly.
'Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet
tonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak,
will I stay here!'
He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with
his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.
'I am a woman,' she said, confronting him steadfastly, 'who from her
childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put
up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an
accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has
been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had
called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have looked on and
approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my breast. There is
not one of them for whom I care, as I could care for a pet dog. I stand
alone in the world, remembering well what a hollow world it has been to me,
and what a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know
that my fame with it is worthless to me.'
'Yes; I imagined that,' he said.
'And calculated on it,' she rejoined, 'and so pursued me. Grown too
indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the
hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage would at
least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered myself to be sold,
as infamously as any woman with a halter round her neck is sold in any
market-place. You know that.'
'Yes,' he said, showing all his teeth 'I know that.'
'And calculated on it,' she rejoined once more, 'and so pursued me.
From my marriage day, I found myself exposed to such new shame - to such
solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been written in
the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn) from one mean
villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation till that time.
This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round with, himself; steeped
me in, with his own hands, and of his own act, repeated hundreds of times.
And thus - forced by the two from every point of rest I had - forced by the
two to yield up the last retreat of love and gentleness within me, or to be
a new misfortune on its innocent object - driven from each to each, and
beset by one when I escaped the other - my anger rose almost to distraction
against both I do not know against which it rose higher - the master or the
man!'
He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of
her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no more
fear of him than of a worm.
'What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'What
meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But if I
tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold with
antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to now, when
my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledge of you I
have since had, you have been a loathsome creature to me which has not its
like on earth; how then?'
He answered with a faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?'
'On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at, you
dared come to my room and speak to me,' she said, 'what passed?'
He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed
'What passed?' she said.
'Your memory is so distinct,' he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
recall it.'
'I can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight - not this
flight, but the flight you thought it - you told me that in the having given
you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you so thought
fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many times before, -
and having made the opportunities, you said, - and in the having openly
avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but aversion, and no care
for myself - I was lost; I had given you the power to traduce my name; and I
lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure of your breath'
'All stratagems in love - ' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage - '
'On that night,' said Edith, 'and then, the struggle that I long had
had with something that was not respect for my good fame - that was I know
not what - perhaps the clinging to that last retreat- was ended. On that
night, and then, I turned from everything but passion and resentment. I
struck a blow that laid your lofty master in the dust, and set you there,
before me, looking at me now, and knowing what I mean.'
He sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put her hand into
her bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair upon her head was stirred.
He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.~
'When I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held
me in his arms as he has done again to-night,' said Edith, pointing at him;
'when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek - the cheek that Florence
would have laid her guiltless face against - when I forget my meeting with
her, while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a flood the knowledge
rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her from the persecution I
had caused by my love, I brought a shame and degradation on her name through
mine, and in all time to come should be the solitary figure representing in
her mind her first avoidance of a guilty creature - then, Husband, from whom
I stand divorced henceforth, I will forget these last two years, and undo
what I have done, and undeceive you!'
Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, and
she held some letters out in her left hand.
'See these!' she said, contemptuously. 'You have addressed these to me
in the false name you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The seals
are unbroken. Take them back!'
She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as she
looked upon him now, a smile was on her face.
'We meet and part to-night,' she said. 'You have fallen on Sicilian
days and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned, and
played your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. You purchase
your voluptuous retirement dear!'
'Edith!' he retorted, menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have done
with this! What devil possesses you?'
'Their name is Legion,' she replied, uprearing her proud form as if she
would have crushed him; 'you and your master have raised them in a fruitful
house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to his innocent
child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast of me, and gnash
your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!'
He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as if
for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering.
'In every vaunt you make,' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out in
you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that
his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on
him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you stand cowering
there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as
those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me on yourself.'
The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would
have faltered once for only one half-moment, he would have pinioned her; but
she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left him.
'We don't part so,' he said. 'Do you think I am drivelling, to let you
go in your mad temper?'
'Do you think,' she answered, 'that I am to be stayed?'
'I'll try, my dear,' he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.
'God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!' she replied.
'And what,' he said, 'if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts
on my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!' and his teeth fairly shone
again. 'We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some unexpected course.
Sit down, sit down!'
'Too late!' she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. 'I have
thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the shame
that will attach to me - resolved to know that it attaches falsely - that
you know it too - and that he does not, never can, and never shall. I'll
die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with you, at the dead of
night. For this, I have met you here, in a false name, as your wife. For
this, I have been seen here by those men, and left here. Nothing can save
you now.
He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the floor,
and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he could
not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her that
was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that her unquenchable
hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put
with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her white bosom, and he thought
that if it struck at hIm, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon.
He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by
which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.
'Lastly, take my warning! Look to yourself!' she said, and smiled
again. 'You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known
that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my
husband in a carriage in the street to-night!'
'Strumpet, it's false!' cried Carker.
At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as
she held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had
come.
'Hark! do you hear it?'
He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and
fancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone
through the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they shut
upon her.
Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt
that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this
night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought
condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly.
But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was
fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere,
expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So,
into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the
uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and
prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there. No, nor in the
hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.
All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and
those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance,
and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together: at
least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and there was
great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was.
He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms,
stopping as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light
raised above his head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when the
door, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went to
it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had dropped a veil in
going through, and shut it in the door.
All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and
knocking with their hands and feet.
He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; the
strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return from
the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have
been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable time; the
recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly
office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his heart beat like
lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so
treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge him with his
mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in
which the veil was shut, but couldn't force it. He opened one of the
windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind, into the
court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless.
The ringing and knocking still continuing - his panic too - he went
back to the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase not
far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his hat and
coat, made the door as secure after hIm as he could, crept down lamp in
hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in a corner,
went out where the stars were shining.
Rob the Grinder loses his Place
The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to
mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the
latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him
with as little noise as possible, hurried off.
In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height that
he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man
of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival,
which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so
near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first
momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt
as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have
rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any
reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud
woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk
into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with
his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.
Some other terror came upon hIm quite removed from this of being
pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the
streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, asssociated
with a trembling of the ground, - a rush and sweep of something through the
air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It
was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had
left behind.
He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where
the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he
first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The
dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws might not
protect him - the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote,
originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans
- his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or in Sicily, where men
might be hired to assissinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner-the
waywardness of guilt and fear - perhaps some sympathy of action with the
turning back of all his schemes - impelled him to turn back too, and go to
England.
'I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,' he thought,
'to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than
abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I
shall not be alone, with out a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by
me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.'
He muttered Edith's name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in
the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful
imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if in search of
her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The people were a-bed;
but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with a lantern, in company
with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of
an old phaeton, to Paris.
The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving
word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away
again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road, which
seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream.
Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some
such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the slender
trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing up, again
went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a horror in his
mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge.
There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the
night; there was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here and there,
and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly
made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him
everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.
He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often
stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious
ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing very slowly
over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with a loud shouting
and lashing, a shadowy postillion muffled to the eyes, checked his four
struggling horses at his side.
'Who goes there! Monsieur?'
'Yes.'
'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.'
'No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered
at the Post-house?'
'A thousand devils! - and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.'
'Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can
travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go then!
Quick!'
'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!
The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the
fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within. Objects
flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried, confusedly lost
sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and cottage immediately
upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting images that rose up in
his mind and vanished as they showed themselves, a black expanse of dread
and rage and baffled villainy. Occasionally, a sigh of mountain air came
from the distant Jura, fading along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was
so furious and horrible, again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away,
and left a chill upon his blood.
The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the
shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct
shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar people, stooping at
their desks and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of
the man whom he was flying from, or of Edith; repetitions in the ringing
bells and rolling wheels, of words that had been spoken; confusions of time
and place, making last night a month ago, a month ago last night - home now
distant beyond hope, now instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry,
darkness, and confusion in his mind, and all around him. - Hallo! Hi! away
at a gallop over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the
smoking horses snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a
demon, away in a frantic triumph on the dark road - whither?
Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells
ring in his ears 'whither?' The wheels roar in his ears 'whither?' All the
noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows dance
upon the horses' heads like imps. No stopping now: no slackening! On, on
Away with him upon the dark road wildly!
He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of
reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for a
minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a voluptuous
compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his treachery to one who
had been true and generous to him, but whose least proud word and look he
had treasured up, at interest, for years - for false and subtle men will
always secretly despise and dislike the object upon which they fawn and
always resent the payment and receipt of homage that they know to be
worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his mind. A lurking rage
against the woman who had so entrapped him and avenged herself was always
there; crude and misshapen schemes of retaliation upon her, floated in his
brain; but nothing was distinct. A hurry and contradiction pervaded all his
thoughts. Even while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking,
his one constant idea was, that he would postpone reflection until some
indefinite time.
Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his
remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous he
had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a distance, and
drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should cross; and then
he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a scared thief, from
only the poor dupe?
He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have his
confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow - to be within his own
knowledge such a miserable tool - was like being paralysed. With an impotent
ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated himself, but still
he fled, and could do nothing else.
Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and
again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so
persuaded of this, that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss of
ground to such uncertainty.
The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.
waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such a fancy of his being in the
next room, hiding - though she knew quite well what a distempered fancy it
was, and had no belief in it - that she forced herself to go there, for her
own conviction. But in vain. The room resumed its shadowy terrors, the
moment she left it; and she had no more power to divest herself of these
vague impressions of dread, than if they had been stone giants, rooted in
the solid earth.
It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her head
upon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in the
gloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntary cry.
Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for an instant,
as searching for an object; then the eyes rested on herself, and lighted up.
'Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!' and the hand rattled on
the glass.
She recognised immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whom
she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraid of
her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a little from
the window, stood undecided and alarmed.
'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful - quiet - humble -
anything you like. But let me speak to you.'
The vehement manner of the entreaty, the earnest expression of the
face, the trembling of the two hands that were raised imploringly, a certain
dread and terror in the voice akin to her own condition at the moment,
prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and opened it.
'May I come in, or shall I speak here?' said the woman, catching at her
hand.
'What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?'
'Not much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted
now to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me
come in, if you can trust me for this once!'
Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the firelight of the
little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her clothes.
'Sit there,' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and look at me. You
remember me?'
'I do.'
'You remember what I told you I had been, and where I came from, ragged
and lame, with the fierce wind and weather beating on my head?'
'Yes.'
'You know how I came back that night, and threw your money in the dirt,
and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am l less earnest
now, than I was then?'
'If what you ask,' said Harriet, gently, 'is forgiveness - '
'But it's not!' returned the other, with a proud, fierce look 'What I
ask is to be believed. Now you shall judge if I am worthy of belief, both as
I was, and as I am.'
Still upon her knees, and with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire
shining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tress of
which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, and
thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:
'When I was young and pretty, and this,' plucking contemptuously at the
hair she held, was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admired enough,
my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found out my
merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and poor, and
thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever thought that of
a daughter yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did - it's never done, we all
know - and that shows that the only instances of mothers bringing up their
daughters wrong, and evil coming of it, are among such miserable folks as
us.'
Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of
having any auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long
tress of hair tight round and round her hand.
'What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched marriages don't come of
such things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and
ruin came on me - came on me.
Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to
Harriet's face, she said:
'I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought
of all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I say. I
was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and carelessly than
even such things are. By whose hand do you think?'
'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet.
'Why do you tremble?' rejoined Alice, with an eager look. 'His usage
made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and lower yet. I
was concerned in a robbery - in every part of it but the gains - and was
found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend, without a penny. Though I
was but a girl, I would have gone to Death, sooner than ask him for a word,
if a word of his could have saved me. I would! To any death that could have
been invented. But my mother, covetous always, sent to him in my name, told
the true story of my case, and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last
gift - for not so many pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do
you think, who snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he
believed, at his feet, and left me without even this poor sign of
remembrance; well satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach
of farther trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do
you think?'
'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.
'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm' and
looking in her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was your
brother James.
Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the
eager look that rested on them.
'When I knew you were his sister - which was on that night - I came
back, weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could
have travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I
could have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that
I was earnest in all that?'
'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'
'Since then,' said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same
look in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In the
broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung
into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud
man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him
to that man?'
'Information!' repeated Harriet.
'What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knew
the manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of his flight
were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word by word,
before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at the time,
looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till it was scarcely
human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit? What if I knew,
now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must, in so many
hours, come up with him?'
'Remove your hand!' said Harriet, recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch is
dreadful to me!'
'I have done this,' pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless
of the interruption. 'Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe
what I am saying?'
'I fear I must. Let my arm go!'
'Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must
have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?'
'Dreadful!' said Harriet.
'Then when you see me now,' said Alice hoarsely, 'here again, kneeling
quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon your
face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what I say, and
that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am ashamed to
speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with myself
all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason, and
wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them
come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen
him as he went out last night, you would know the danger better.
'How can it be prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet.
'All night long,' pursued the other, hurriedly, 'I had dreams of him -
and yet I didn't sleep - in his blood. All day, I have had him near me.
'What can I do?' cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.
'If there is anyone who'll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose
no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?'
'Yes.'
'Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that
he doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is
on the road - I know he is! - and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while
there is time - if there is time - and not to meet him yet. A month or so
will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere
but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for
himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head without.'
The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face,
and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet's arm; and the place where
she had been was empty.
The Fugitives
Tea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment,
comprising some half-dozen rooms; - a dull cold hall or corridor, a
dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, or
boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one
large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two
or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means of
communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain
small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses,
to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the
first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of
windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the centre, upon which the
whole four sides of the mansion looked.
An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show
of state, reigned in these rooms The walls and ceilings were gilded and
painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung in
festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and
intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from
the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the lattice-blinds (now
closely shut) were opened, and the light let in, traces were discernible
among this finery, of wear and tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and
lengthened intervals of want of use and habitation, when such shows and toys
of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do.
Even night, and clusters of burning candles, could not wholly efface them,
though the general glitter threw them in the shade.
The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses,
scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one room
- that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from the
hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of open
doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its
radiance sat a beautiful woman - Edith.
She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a
little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but
the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late
repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and yet
regardless of herself and of all else, she sat wIth her dark eyes cast down,
waiting for someone.
No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thought,
beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any pause,
possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering if for a moment
she released them from her control; with her nostril inflated; her hands
clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in her breast; she sat, and
waited.
At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall,
she started up, and cried 'Who's that?' The answer was in French, and two
men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.
'Who had bade them to do so?' she asked.
'Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the
apartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there for an hour, en route,
and left the letter for Madame - Madame had received it surely?'
'Yes.'
'A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been
forgotten had struck hIm;' a bald man, with a large beard from a
neighbouring restaurant; 'with despair! Monsieur had said that supper was to
be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the commands he
had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head the honour to
request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur would find
that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced.'
Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the
table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they had
finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and into the
drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the doors;
particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage in the wall.
From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side. She then came
back.
The men - the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped - had completed
their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He who had
spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be long before
Monsieur arrived?
'She couldn't say. It was all one.'
'Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant.
Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel - or a Frenchman - it was all the
same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English
nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great Heaven,
here was Monsieur. Behold him!'
In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his
gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in that
sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced Madame, and
addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife
'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!' The
bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.
Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she
was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her figure
drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable.
'Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on
these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is in his
room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.' These facts the
bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper came.
The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this
arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Let
them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes
with his own hands.
'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'
Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
night.
'But Madame - ' the bald man hinted.
'Madame,' replied Monsieur, 'had her own maid. It was enough.'
'A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!'
'I came here alone,' said Edith 'It was my choice to do so. I am well
used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me.
Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility,
proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it
after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out,
observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the
great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him, though she was
looking straight before her.
As the sound of Carker's fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last
distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled with
it, in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened;
and then came back towards her, laying a long train of footsteps through the
silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as he came along. Her hand,
for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon
the table; then she stood as she had stood before.
'How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.
'What?' she returned.
Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp
in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.
'I say,' he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most courtly smile, 'how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessarty
caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged an
attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the purpose,
though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are the most
beautiful, my love) of women.'
Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.
'I have never,' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do
to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the
reality.'
Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.
'Hard, unrelenting terms they were!' said Carker, with a smile, 'but
they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious and
more safe. Sicily shall be the Place of our retreat. In the idlest and
easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation for old
slavery.'
He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.
'Stand still!' she said, 'or I shall murder you!'
The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a fire
had stopped him.
'Stand still!' she said, 'come no nearer me, upon your life!'
They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in
his face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
'Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight and
hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?'
'Do you think to frighten me,' she answered fiercely, 'from any purpose
that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the
solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here alone,
designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I feared you,
should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your face what I am
going to tell?'
'And what is that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than
any other woman in her best humour?'
'I tell you nothing,' she returned, until you go back to that chair -
except this, once again - Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you,
if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!'
'Do you mistake me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin.
Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair.
He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled,
irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his nail
nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even while
he feigned to be amused by her caprice.
She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom wIth her
hand, said:
'I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you - and you know it, while
I speak - with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that
lives.'
He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he
regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon
the floor with a muttered oath.
'How many times,' said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him' 'has
your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times in
your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted with my
courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my wound of
love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How often have you
fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and tempted me to
take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?'
'I have no doubt, Ma'am,' he replied, 'that you have kept a good
account, and that it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor
wretch, this was well enough - '
'Why, if,' she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust,
that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, 'if all my other reasons
for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you
for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been enough to hold
their place.'
'Is that a reason why you have run away with me?' he asked her,
tauntingly.
'Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet
tonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to speak,
will I stay here!'
He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with
his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.
'I am a woman,' she said, confronting him steadfastly, 'who from her
childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put
up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had an
accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it has
been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had
called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have looked on and
approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my breast. There is
not one of them for whom I care, as I could care for a pet dog. I stand
alone in the world, remembering well what a hollow world it has been to me,
and what a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know
that my fame with it is worthless to me.'
'Yes; I imagined that,' he said.
'And calculated on it,' she rejoined, 'and so pursued me. Grown too
indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the
hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage would at
least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered myself to be sold,
as infamously as any woman with a halter round her neck is sold in any
market-place. You know that.'
'Yes,' he said, showing all his teeth 'I know that.'
'And calculated on it,' she rejoined once more, 'and so pursued me.
From my marriage day, I found myself exposed to such new shame - to such
solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been written in
the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn) from one mean
villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation till that time.
This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round with, himself; steeped
me in, with his own hands, and of his own act, repeated hundreds of times.
And thus - forced by the two from every point of rest I had - forced by the
two to yield up the last retreat of love and gentleness within me, or to be
a new misfortune on its innocent object - driven from each to each, and
beset by one when I escaped the other - my anger rose almost to distraction
against both I do not know against which it rose higher - the master or the
man!'
He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of
her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no more
fear of him than of a worm.
'What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'What
meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But if I
tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold with
antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to now, when
my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledge of you I
have since had, you have been a loathsome creature to me which has not its
like on earth; how then?'
He answered with a faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?'
'On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at, you
dared come to my room and speak to me,' she said, 'what passed?'
He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed
'What passed?' she said.
'Your memory is so distinct,' he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
recall it.'
'I can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight - not this
flight, but the flight you thought it - you told me that in the having given
you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you so thought
fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many times before, -
and having made the opportunities, you said, - and in the having openly
avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but aversion, and no care
for myself - I was lost; I had given you the power to traduce my name; and I
lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure of your breath'
'All stratagems in love - ' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage - '
'On that night,' said Edith, 'and then, the struggle that I long had
had with something that was not respect for my good fame - that was I know
not what - perhaps the clinging to that last retreat- was ended. On that
night, and then, I turned from everything but passion and resentment. I
struck a blow that laid your lofty master in the dust, and set you there,
before me, looking at me now, and knowing what I mean.'
He sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put her hand into
her bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair upon her head was stirred.
He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.~
'When I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held
me in his arms as he has done again to-night,' said Edith, pointing at him;
'when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek - the cheek that Florence
would have laid her guiltless face against - when I forget my meeting with
her, while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a flood the knowledge
rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her from the persecution I
had caused by my love, I brought a shame and degradation on her name through
mine, and in all time to come should be the solitary figure representing in
her mind her first avoidance of a guilty creature - then, Husband, from whom
I stand divorced henceforth, I will forget these last two years, and undo
what I have done, and undeceive you!'
Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, and
she held some letters out in her left hand.
'See these!' she said, contemptuously. 'You have addressed these to me
in the false name you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The seals
are unbroken. Take them back!'
She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as she
looked upon him now, a smile was on her face.
'We meet and part to-night,' she said. 'You have fallen on Sicilian
days and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned, and
played your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. You purchase
your voluptuous retirement dear!'
'Edith!' he retorted, menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have done
with this! What devil possesses you?'
'Their name is Legion,' she replied, uprearing her proud form as if she
would have crushed him; 'you and your master have raised them in a fruitful
house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to his innocent
child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast of me, and gnash
your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!'
He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as if
for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering.
'In every vaunt you make,' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out in
you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that
his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on
him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you stand cowering
there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as
those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me on yourself.'
The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would
have faltered once for only one half-moment, he would have pinioned her; but
she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left him.
'We don't part so,' he said. 'Do you think I am drivelling, to let you
go in your mad temper?'
'Do you think,' she answered, 'that I am to be stayed?'
'I'll try, my dear,' he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.
'God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!' she replied.
'And what,' he said, 'if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts
on my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!' and his teeth fairly shone
again. 'We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some unexpected course.
Sit down, sit down!'
'Too late!' she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. 'I have
thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear the shame
that will attach to me - resolved to know that it attaches falsely - that
you know it too - and that he does not, never can, and never shall. I'll
die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with you, at the dead of
night. For this, I have met you here, in a false name, as your wife. For
this, I have been seen here by those men, and left here. Nothing can save
you now.
He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the floor,
and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he could
not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her that
was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that her unquenchable
hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put
with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her white bosom, and he thought
that if it struck at hIm, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon.
He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by
which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.
'Lastly, take my warning! Look to yourself!' she said, and smiled
again. 'You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known
that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my
husband in a carriage in the street to-night!'
'Strumpet, it's false!' cried Carker.
At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as
she held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had
come.
'Hark! do you hear it?'
He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and
fancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone
through the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they shut
upon her.
Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt
that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this
night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought
condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly.
But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he was
fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere,
expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the room was empty. So,
into the drawing-room and dining-room he went, in succession, with the
uncertain steps of a man in a strange place; looking fearfully about, and
prying behind screens and couches; but she was not there. No, nor in the
hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a glance.
All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and
those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance,
and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together: at
least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and there was
great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was.
He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms,
stopping as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light
raised above his head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when the
door, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went to
it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had dropped a veil in
going through, and shut it in the door.
All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and
knocking with their hands and feet.
He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; the
strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return from
the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he would have
been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable time; the
recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for any friendly
office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his heart beat like
lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so
treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge him with his
mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried the door in
which the veil was shut, but couldn't force it. He opened one of the
windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind, into the
court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless.
The ringing and knocking still continuing - his panic too - he went
back to the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase not
far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his hat and
coat, made the door as secure after hIm as he could, crept down lamp in
hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in a corner,
went out where the stars were shining.
Rob the Grinder loses his Place
The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to
mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the
latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him
with as little noise as possible, hurried off.
In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height that
he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man
of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival,
which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so
near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first
momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt
as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have
rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any
reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud
woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk
into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with
his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.
Some other terror came upon hIm quite removed from this of being
pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the
streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, asssociated
with a trembling of the ground, - a rush and sweep of something through the
air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It
was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had
left behind.
He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where
the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he
first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The
dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws might not
protect him - the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote,
originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans
- his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or in Sicily, where men
might be hired to assissinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner-the
waywardness of guilt and fear - perhaps some sympathy of action with the
turning back of all his schemes - impelled him to turn back too, and go to
England.
'I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,' he thought,
'to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than
abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I
shall not be alone, with out a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by
me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.'
He muttered Edith's name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in
the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful
imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if in search of
her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The people were a-bed;
but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with a lantern, in company
with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of
an old phaeton, to Paris.
The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving
word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away
again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road, which
seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream.
Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some
such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the slender
trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing up, again
went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a horror in his
mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge.
There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the
night; there was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here and there,
and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly
made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him
everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.
He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often
stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious
ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing very slowly
over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with a loud shouting
and lashing, a shadowy postillion muffled to the eyes, checked his four
struggling horses at his side.
'Who goes there! Monsieur?'
'Yes.'
'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.'
'No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered
at the Post-house?'
'A thousand devils! - and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.'
'Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can
travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go then!
Quick!'
'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!
The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the
fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within. Objects
flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried, confusedly lost
sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and cottage immediately
upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting images that rose up in
his mind and vanished as they showed themselves, a black expanse of dread
and rage and baffled villainy. Occasionally, a sigh of mountain air came
from the distant Jura, fading along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was
so furious and horrible, again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away,
and left a chill upon his blood.
The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the
shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct
shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar people, stooping at
their desks and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of
the man whom he was flying from, or of Edith; repetitions in the ringing
bells and rolling wheels, of words that had been spoken; confusions of time
and place, making last night a month ago, a month ago last night - home now
distant beyond hope, now instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry,
darkness, and confusion in his mind, and all around him. - Hallo! Hi! away
at a gallop over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the
smoking horses snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a
demon, away in a frantic triumph on the dark road - whither?
Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells
ring in his ears 'whither?' The wheels roar in his ears 'whither?' All the
noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows dance
upon the horses' heads like imps. No stopping now: no slackening! On, on
Away with him upon the dark road wildly!
He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of
reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for a
minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a voluptuous
compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his treachery to one who
had been true and generous to him, but whose least proud word and look he
had treasured up, at interest, for years - for false and subtle men will
always secretly despise and dislike the object upon which they fawn and
always resent the payment and receipt of homage that they know to be
worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his mind. A lurking rage
against the woman who had so entrapped him and avenged herself was always
there; crude and misshapen schemes of retaliation upon her, floated in his
brain; but nothing was distinct. A hurry and contradiction pervaded all his
thoughts. Even while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking,
his one constant idea was, that he would postpone reflection until some
indefinite time.
Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his
remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous he
had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a distance, and
drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should cross; and then
he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a scared thief, from
only the poor dupe?
He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have his
confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow - to be within his own
knowledge such a miserable tool - was like being paralysed. With an impotent
ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated himself, but still
he fled, and could do nothing else.
Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and
again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so
persuaded of this, that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss of
ground to such uncertainty.
The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.