Henry Dunbar, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [reading list txt] 📗

subject of many a long discussion amongst the towns-people at Shorncliffe, and the familiar name struck the surgeon's ear.

"But what of that?" thought Mr. Vincent. "The name is not such a very uncommon one."

Clement went to his mother's room and knocked softly at the door. The widow came out to him presently.

"How is she now?" Clement asked.

"I can scarcely tell you. Her manner frightens me. She is lying on her bed as motionless as if she were a corpse, and with her eyes fixed upon the blank wall opposite to her. When I speak to her, she does not answer me by so much as a look; but if I go near her she shivers, and gives a long shuddering sigh. What does it all mean, Clement?"

"Heaven knows, mother. I can only tell you that she has gone through a meeting which was certainly calculated to have considerable effect upon her mind. But I had no idea that the effect would be anything like this. Can the doctor come?"

"Yes; he had better come at once."

Clement returned to the sitting-room, and remained there while Mr. Vincent went to see Margaret. To Poor Clement it seemed as if the surgeon was absent nearly an hour, so intolerable was the anguish of that interval of suspense.

At last, however, the creaking footstep of the medical man sounded in the corridor. Clement hurried to the door to meet him.

"Well!" he cried, eagerly.

Mr. Vincent shook his head.

"It is a case in which my services can be of very little avail," he said; "the young lady is suffering from some mental uneasiness, which she refuses to communicate to her friends. If you could get her to talk to you, she would no doubt be very much benefited. If she were an ordinary person, she would cry, and the relief of tears would have a most advantageous effect upon her mind. Our patient is by no means an ordinary person She has a very strong will."

"Margaret has a strong will!" exclaimed Clement, with a look of surprise; "why, she is gentleness itself."

"Very likely; but she has a will of iron, nevertheless. I implored her to speak to me just now; the tone of her voice would have helped to some slight diagnosis of her state; but I might as well have implored a statue. She only shook her head slowly, and she never once looked at me. However, I will send her a sedative draught, which had better be taken immediately, and I'll look round in the morning."

Mr. Vincent left the Reindeer, and Clement went to his mother's room. That loving mother was ready to sympathize with every trouble that affected her only son. She came out of Margaret's room and went to meet Clement.

"Is she still the same, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, quite the same. Would you like to see her?"

"Very much."

Mrs. Austin and her son went into the adjoining chamber. Margaret was lying, dressed in the damp, draggled gown which she had worn that afternoon, upon the outside of the bed. The dull stony look of her face filled Clement's mind with an awful terror. He began to fear that she was going mad.

He sat down upon a chair close by the bed, and watched her for some moments in silence, while his mother stood by, scarcely less anxious than himself.

Margaret's arm hung loosely by her side as lifeless in its attitude as if it had belonged to the dead. Clement took the slender hand in his. Lie had expected to find it dry and burning with feverish heat; but, to his surprise, it was cold as ice.

"Margaret," he said, in a low earnest voice, "you know how dearly I have loved and do love you; you know how entirely my happiness depends upon yours; surely, my dear one, you will not refuse--you cannot be so cruel as to keep your sorrow a secret from him who has so good a right to share it? Speak to me, my darling. Remember what suffering you are inflicting upon me by this cruel silence."

At last the hazel eyes lost their fixed look, and wandered for a moment to Clement Austin's face.

"Have pity upon me," the girl said, in a hoarse unnatural voice; "have compassion upon me, for I need man's mercy as well as the mercy of God. Have some pity upon me, Clement Austin, and leave me; I will talk to you to-morrow."

"You will tell me all that has happened?"

"I will talk to you to-morrow," answered Margaret, looking at her lover with a white, inflexible face; "but leave me now; leave me, or I will run out of this room, and away from this house. I shall go mad if I am not left alone!"

Clement Austin rose from his seat near the bedside.

"I am going, Margaret," he said, in a tone of wounded feeling; "but I leave you with a heavy heart. I did not think there would ever come a time in which you would reject my sympathy."

"I will talk to you to-morrow," Margaret said, for the second time.

She spoke in a strange mechanical way, as if this had been a set speech which she had arranged for herself.

Clement stood looking at her for some little time; but there was no change either in her face or attitude, and the young man went slowly and sorrowfully from the room.

"I leave her in your hands, mother," he said. "I know how tender and true a friend she has in you; I leave her in your care, under Providence. May Heaven have pity upon her and me!"


CHAPTER XXXIV.


FAREWELL.

Margaret submitted to take the sedative draught sent by the medical man. She submitted, at Mrs. Austin's request; but it seemed as if she scarcely understood why the medicine was offered to her. She was like a sleep-walker, whose brain is peopled by the creatures of a dream, and who has no consciousness of the substantial realities that surround him.

The draught Mr. Vincent had spoken of as a sedative turned out to be a very powerful opiate, and Margaret sank into a profound slumber about a quarter of an hour after taking the medicine.

Mrs. Austin went to Clement to carry him these good tidings.

"I shall sit up two or three hours, and see how the poor girl goes on, Clement," the widow said; "but I hope you'll go to bed; I know all this excitement has worn you out."

"No, mother; I feel no sense of fatigue."

"But you will try to get some rest, to please me? See, dear boy, it's already nearly twelve o'clock."

"Yes, if you wish it, mother, I'll go to my room," Mr. Austin answered, quickly.

His room was near those occupied by his mother and Margaret, much nearer than the sitting-room. He bade Mrs. Austin good night and left her; but he had no thought of going to bed, or even trying to sleep. He went to his own room, and walked up and down; going out into the corridor every now and then, to listen at the door of his mother's chamber.

He heard nothing. Some time between two and three o'clock Mrs. Austin opened the door of her room, and found her son lingering in the corridor.

"Is she still asleep, mother?" he asked.

"Yes, and she is sleeping very calmly. I am going to bed now; pray try to get some sleep yourself, Clem."

"I will, mother."

Clement returned to his room. He was thankful, as he thought that sleep would bring tranquillity and relief to Margaret's overwrought brain. He went to bed and fell asleep, for he was exhausted by the fatigue of the day and the anxiety of the night. Poor Clement fell asleep, and dreamt that he met Margaret Wilmot by moonlight in the park around Maudesley Abbey, walking with a DEAD MAN, whose face was strange to him. This was the last of many dreams, all more or less grotesque or horrible, but none so vivid or distinct as this. The end of the vision woke Clement with a sudden shock, and he opened his eyes upon the cold morning light, which seemed especially cold in this chamber at the Reindeer, where the paper on the walls was of the palest grey, and every curtain or drapery of a spotless white.

Clement lost no time over his toilet. He looked at his watch while dressing, and found that it was between seven and eight. It wanted a quarter to eight when he left his room, and went to his mother's door to inquire about Margaret. He knocked softly, but there was no answer; then he tried the door, and finding it unlocked, opened it a few inches with a cautious hand, and listened to his mother's regular breathing.

"She is asleep, poor soul," he thought. "I won't disturb her, for she must want rest after sitting up half last night."

Clement closed the door as noiselessly as he had opened it, and then went slowly to the sitting-room. There was a struggling fire in the shining grate; and the indefatigable waiter, who refused to believe in the extinction of mail-coaches, had laid the breakfast apparatus--frosty-looking white-and-blue cups and saucers on a snowy cloth, a cut-glass cream-jug that looked as if it had been made out of ice, and a brazen urn in the last stage of polish. The breakfast service was harmoniously adapted to the season, and eminently calculated to produce a fit of shivering in the sojourner at the Reindeer.

But Clement Austin did not bestow so much as one glance upon the breakfast-table. He hurried to the bow-window, where Margaret Wilmot was sitting, neatly dressed in her morning garments, with her shawl on, and her bonnet lying on a chair near her.

"Margaret!" exclaimed Clement, as he approached the place where Joseph Wilmot's daughter was sitting; "my dear Margaret, why did you get up so early this morning, when you so much need rest?"

The girl rose and looked at her lover with a grave and quiet earnestness of expression; but her face was quite as colourless as it had been upon the previous night, and her lips trembled a little as she spoke to Clement.

"I have had sufficient rest," she said, in a low, tremulous voice; "I got up early because--because--I am going away."

Her two hands had been hanging loosely amongst the fringes of her shawl; she lifted them now, and linked her fingers together with a convulsive motion; but she never withdrew her eyes from Clement's face, and her glance never faltered as she looked at him.

"Going away, Margaret?" the cashier cried; "going away--to-day--this morning?"

"Yes, by the half-past nine o'clock train."

"Margaret, you must be mad to talk of such a thing."

"No," the girl answered, slowly; "that is the strangest thing of all--I am not mad. I am going away, Clement--Mr. Austin. I wished to avoid seeing you. I meant to have written to you to tell you----"

"To tell me what, Margaret?" asked Clement. "Is it I who am going mad; or am I dreaming all this?"

"It is no dream, Mr. Austin. My letter would have only told you the truth. I am going away from here because I can never be your wife."

"You can never be my wife! Why not, Margaret?"

"I cannot tell you the reason."

"But you _shall_ tell me, Margaret!"