David Elginbrod

And Lady Emily lay and gazed in loving admiration at the face of the lady’s-maid.

“Shall I send Sarah to you now, my lady?” said Margaret; “or would you like me to stay with you?”

“Oh! you, you, please—if Mrs. Elton can spare you.”

“She will only think of your comfort, I know, my lady.”

“That recalls me to my duty, and makes me think of her.”

“But your comfort will be more to her than anything else.”

“In that case you must stay, Margaret.”

“With pleasure, my lady.”

Mrs. Elton entered, and quite confirmed what Margaret had said.

“But,” she added, “it is time Lady Emily had something to eat. Go to the cook, Margaret, and see if the beef-tea Miss Cameron ordered is ready.”

Margaret went.

“What a comfort it is,” said Mrs. Elton, wishing to interest Lady Emily, “that now-a-days, when infidelity is so rampant, such corroborations of Sacred Writ are springing up on all sides! There are the discoveries at Nineveh; and now these Spiritual Manifestations, which bear witness so clearly to another world.”

But Lady Emily made no reply. She began to toss about as before, and show signs of inexplicable discomfort. Margaret had hardly been gone two minutes, when the invalid moaned out:

“What a time Margaret is gone!—when will she be back?”

“I am here, my love,” said Mrs. Elton.

“Yes, yes; thank you. But I want Margaret.”

“She will be here presently. Have patience, my dear.”

“Please, don’t let Miss Cameron come near me. I am afraid I am very wicked, but I can’t bear her to come near me.”

“No, no, dear; we will keep you to ourselves.”

“Is Mr.—, the foreign gentleman, I mean—below?”

“No. He is gone.”

“Are you sure? I can hardly believe it.”

“What do you mean, dear? I am sure he is gone.”

Lady Emily did not answer. Margaret returned. She took the beef-tea, and grew quiet again.

“You must not leave her ladyship, Margaret,” whispered her mistress. “She has taken it into her head to like no one but you, and you must just stay with her.”

“Very well, ma’am. I shall be most happy.”

Mrs. Elton left the room. Lady Emily said:

“Read something to me, Margaret.”

“What shall I read?”

“Anything you like.”

Margaret got a Bible, and read to her one of her father’s favourite chapters, the fortieth of Isaiah.

“I have no right to trust in God, Margaret.”

“Why, my lady?”

“Because I do not feel any faith in him; and you know we cannot be accepted without faith.”

“That is to make God as changeable as we are, my lady.”

“But the Bible says so.”

“I don’t think it does; but if an angel from heaven said so, I would not believe it.”

“Margaret!”

“My lady, I love God with all my heart, and I cannot bear you should think so of him. You might as well say that a mother would go away from her little child, lying moaning in the dark, because it could not see her, and was afraid to put its hand out into the dark to feel for her.”

“Then you think he does care for us, even when we are very wicked. But he cannot bear wicked people.”

“Who dares to say that?” cried Margaret. “Has he not been making the world go on and on, with all the wickedness that is in it; yes, making new babies to be born of thieves and murderers and sad women and all, for hundreds of years? God help us, Lady Emily! If he cannot bear wicked people, then this world is hell itself, and the Bible is all a lie, and the Saviour did never die for sinners. It is only the holy Pharisees that can’t bear wicked people.”

“Oh! how happy I should be, if that were true! I should not be afraid now.”

“You are not wicked, dear Lady Emily; but if you were, God would bend over you, trying to get you back, like a father over his sick child. Will people never believe about the lost sheep?”

“Oh! yes; I believe that. But then—”

“You can’t trust it quite. Trust in God, then, the very father of you—and never mind the words. You have been taught to turn the very words of God against himself.”

Lady Emily was weeping.

“Lady Emily,” Margaret went on, “if I felt my heart as hard as a stone; if I did not love God, or man, or woman, or little child, I would yet say to God in my heart: ‘O God, see how I trust thee, because thou art perfect, and not changeable like me. I do not love thee. I love nobody. I am not even sorry for it. Thou seest how much I need thee to come close to me, to put thy arm round me, to say to me, my child; for the worse my state, the greater my need of my father who loves me. Come to me, and my day will dawn. My beauty and my love will come back; and oh! how I shall love thee, my God! and know that my love is thy love, my blessedness thy being.’”

As Margaret spoke, she seemed to have forgotten Lady Emily’s presence, and to be actually praying. Those who cannot receive such words from the lips of a lady’s-maid, must be reminded what her father was, and that she had lost him. She had had advantages at least equal to those which David the Shepherd had—and he wrote the Psalms.

She ended with:

“I do not even desire thee to come, yet come thou.”

She seemed to pray entirely as Lady Emily, not as Margaret. When she had ceased, Lady Emily said, sobbing:

“You will not leave me, Margaret? I will tell you why another time.”

“I will not leave you, my dear lady.”

Margaret stooped and kissed her forehead. Lady Emily threw her arms round her neck, and offered her mouth to be kissed by the maid. In another minute she was fast asleep, with Margaret seated by her side, every now and then glancing up at her from her work, with a calm face, over which brooded the mist of tears.

That night, as Hugh paced up and down the floor of his study about midnight, he was awfully startled by the sudden opening of the door and the apparition of Harry in his nightshirt, pale as death, and scarcely able to articulate the words:

“The ghost! the ghost!”

He took the poor boy in his arms, held him fast, and comforted him. When he was a little soothed,

“Oh, Harry!” he said, lightly, “you’ve been dreaming. Where’s the ghost?”

“In the Ghost’s Walk,” cried Harry, almost shrieking anew with terror.

“How do you know it is there?”

“I saw it from my window.—I couldn’t sleep. I got up and looked out—I don’t know why—and I saw it! I saw it!”

The words were followed by a long cry of terror.

“Come and show it to me,” said Hugh, wanting to make light of it.

“No, no, Mr. Sutherland—please not. I couldn’t go back into that room.”

“Very well, dear Harry; you shan’t go back. You shall sleep with me, to-night.”

“Oh! thank you, thank you, dear Mr. Sutherland. You will love me again, won’t you?”

This touched Hugh’s heart. He could hardly refrain from tears. His old love, buried before it was dead, revived. He clasped the boy to his heart, and carried him to his own bed; then, to comfort him, undressed and lay down beside him, without even going to look if he too might not see the ghost. She had brought about one good thing at least that night; though, I fear, she had no merit in it.

Lady Emily’s room likewise looked out upon the Ghost’s Walk. Margaret heard the cry as she sat by the sleeping Emily; and, not knowing whence it came, went, naturally enough, in her perplexity, to the window. From it she could see distinctly, for it was clear moonlight: a white figure went gliding away along the deserted avenue. She immediately guessed what the cry had meant; but as she had heard a door bang directly after (as Harry shut his behind him with a terrified instinct, to keep the awful window in), she was not very uneasy about him. She felt besides that she must remain where she was, according to her promise to Lady Emily. But she resolved to be prepared for the possible recurrence of the same event, and accordingly revolved it in her mind. She was sure that any report of it coming to Lady Emily’s ears, would greatly impede her recovery; for she instinctively felt that her illness had something to do with the questionable occupations in the library. She watched by her bedside all the night, slumbering at times, but roused in a moment by any restlessness of the patient; when she found that, simply by laying her hand on hers, or kissing her forehead, she could restore her at once to quiet sleep.

CHAPTER XIX. THE GHOST’S WALK

Thierry.—‘Tis full of fearful shadows.Ordella.–     So is sleep, sir;Or anything that’s merely ours, and mortal;We were begotten gods else.  But those fearsFeeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts,Fly, like the shapes of clouds we form, to nothing.BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.—Thierry and Theodoret.

Margaret sat watching the waking of Lady Emily. Knowing how much the first thought colours the feeling of the whole day, she wished that Lady Emily should at once be aware that she was by her side.

She opened her eyes, and a smile broke over her face when she perceived her nurse. But Margaret did not yet speak to her.

Every nurse should remember that waking ought always to be a gradual operation; and, except in the most triumphant health, is never complete on the opening of the eyes.

“Margaret, I am better,” said Lady Emily, at last.

“I am very glad, my lady.”

“I have been lying awake for some time, and I am sure I am better. I don’t see strange-coloured figures floating about the room as I did yesterday. Were you not out of the room a few minutes ago?”

“Just for one moment, my lady.”

“I knew it. But I did not mind it. Yesterday, when you left me, those figures grew ten times as many, the moment you were gone. But you will stay with me to-day, too, Margaret?” she added, with some anxiety.

“I will, if you find you need me. But I may be forced to leave you a little while this evening—you must try to allow me this, dear Lady Emily.”

“Of course I will. I will be quite patient, I promise you, whatever comes to me.”

When Harry woke, after a very troubled sleep, from which he had often started with sudden cries of terror, Hugh made him promise not to increase the confusion of the household, by speaking of what he had seen. Harry promised at once, but begged in his turn that Hugh would not leave him all day. It did not need the pale scared face of his pupil to enforce the request; for Hugh was already anxious lest the fright the boy had had, should exercise a permanently deleterious effect on his constitution. Therefore he hardly let him out of his sight.

But although Harry kept his word, the cloud of perturbation gathered thicker in the kitchen and the servants’ hall. Nothing came to the ears of their master and mistress; but gloomy looks, sudden starts, and sidelong glances of fear, indicated the prevailing character of the feelings of the household.

And although Lady Emily was not so ill, she had not yet taken a decided turn for the better, but appeared to suffer from some kind of low fever. The medical man who was called in, confessed to Mrs. Elton, that as yet he could say nothing very decided about her condition, but recommended great quiet and careful nursing. Margaret scarcely left her room, and the invalid showed far more than the ordinary degree of dependence upon her nurse. In her relation to her, she was more like a child than an invalid.

About noon she was better. She called Margaret and said to her:

“Margaret, dear, I should like to tell you one thing that annoys me very much.”

“What is it, dear Lady Emily?”

“That man haunts me. I cannot bear the thought of him; and yet I cannot get rid of him. I am sure he is a bad man. Are you certain he is not here?”

“Yes, indeed, my lady. He has not been here since the day before yesterday.”

“And yet when you leave me for an instant, I always feel as if he were sitting in the very seat where you were the moment before, or just coming to the door and about to open it. That is why I cannot bear you to leave me.”

Margaret might have confessed to some slighter sensations of the same kind; but they did not oppress her as they did Lady Emily.

“God is nearer to you than any thought or feeling of yours, Lady Emily. Do not be afraid. If all the evil things in the universe were around us, they could not come inside the ring that he makes about us. He always keeps a place for himself and his child, into which no other being can enter.”

“Oh! how you must love God, Margaret!”

“Indeed I do love him, my lady. If ever anything looks beautiful or lovely to me, then I know at once that God is that.”

“But, then, what right have we to take the good of that, however true it is, when we are not beautiful ourselves?”

“That only makes God the more beautiful—in that he will pour out the more of his beauty upon us to make us beautiful. If we care for his glory, we shall be glad to believe all this about him. But we are too anxious about feeling good ourselves, to rejoice in his perfect goodness. I think we should find that enough, my lady. For, if he be good, are not we his children, and sure of having it, not merely feeling it, some day?”

Here Margaret repeated a little poem of George Herbert’s. She had found his poems amongst Mrs. Elton’s books, who, coming upon her absorbed in it one day, had made her a present of the volume. Then indeed Margaret had found a friend.

The poem is called Dialogue:

“Sweetest Saviour, if my soulWere but worth the having—”

“Oh, what a comfort you are to me, Margaret!” Lady Emily said, after a short silence. “Where did you learn such things?”

“From my father, and from Jesus Christ, and from God himself, showing them to me in my heart.”

“Ah! that is why, as often as you come into my room, even if I am very troubled, I feel as if the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the birds sang, and the tree-tops went waving in the wind, as they used to do before I was taken ill—I mean before they thought I must go abroad. You seem to make everything clear, and right, and plain. I wish I were you, Margaret.”

“If I were you, my lady, I would rather be what God chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about—born in God’s thoughts—and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking. Is it not, my lady?”

“It is,” said Lady Emily, and was silent.

The shadows of evening came on. As soon as it was dark, Margaret took her place at one of the windows hidden from Lady Emily by a bed-curtain. She raised the blind, and pulled aside one curtain, to let her have a view of the trees outside. She had placed the one candle so as not to shine either on the window or on her own eyes. Lady Emily was asleep. One hour and another passed, and still she sat there—motionless, watching.

Margaret did not know, that at another window—the one, indeed, next to her own—stood a second watcher. It was Hugh, in Harry’s room: Harry was asleep in Hugh’s. He had no light. He stood with his face close against the windowpane, on which the moon shone brightly. All below him the woods were half dissolved away in the moonlight. The Ghost’s Walk lay full before him, like a tunnel through the trees. He could see a great way down, by the light that fell into it, at various intervals, from between the boughs overhead. He stood thus for a long time, gazing somewhat listlessly. Suddenly he became all eyes, as he caught the white glimmer of something passing up the avenue. He stole out of the room, down to the library by the back-stair, and so through the library window into the wood. He reached the avenue sideways, at some distance from the house, and peeped from behind a tree, up and down. At first he saw nothing. But, a moment after, while he was looking down the avenue, that is, away from the house, a veiled figure in white passed him noiselessly from the other direction. From the way in which he was looking at the moment, it had passed him before he saw it. It made no sound. Only some early-fallen leaves rustled as they hurried away in uncertain eddies, startled by the sweep of its trailing garments, which yet were held up by hands hidden within them. On it went. Hugh’s eyes were fixed on its course. He could not move, and his heart laboured so frightfully that he could hardly breathe. The figure had not advanced far, however, before he heard a repressed cry of agony, and it sank to the earth, and vanished; while from where it disappeared, down the path, came, silently too, turning neither to the right nor the left, a second figure, veiled in black from head to foot.

“It is the nun in Lady Euphrasia’s room,” said Hugh to himself.

This passed him too, and, walking slowly towards the house, disappeared somewhere, near the end of the avenue. Turning once more, with reviving courage—for his blood had begun to flow more equably—Hugh ventured to approach the spot where the white figure had vanished. He found nothing there but the shadow of a huge tree. He walked through the avenue to the end, and then back to the house, but saw nothing; though he often started at fancied appearances. Sorely bewildered, he returned to his own room. After speculating till thought was weary, he lay down beside Harry, whom he was thankful to find in a still repose, and fell fast asleep.

Margaret lay on a couch in Lady Emily’s room, and slept likewise; but she started wide awake at every moan of the invalid, who often moaned in her sleep.

CHAPTER XX. THE BAD MAN

She kent he was nae gentle knight,That she had letten in;For neither when he gaed nor cam’,Kissed he her cheek or chin.He neither kissed her when he cam’Nor clappit her when he gaed;And in and out at her bower window,The moon shone like the gleed.Glenkindie.—Old Scotch Ballad.

When Euphra recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen—for I need hardly explain to my readers, that it was she who walked the Ghost’s Walk in white—on seeing Margaret, whom, under the irresistible influences of the moonlight and a bad conscience, she took for the very being whom Euphra herself was personating—when she recovered, I say, she found herself lying in the wood, with Funkelstein, whom she had gone to meet, standing beside her. Her first words were of anger, as she tried to rise, and found she could not.

“How long, Count Halkar, am I to be your slave?”

“Till you have learned to submit.”

“Have I not done all I can?”

“You have not found it. You are free from the moment you place that ring, belonging to me, in right of my family, into my hands.”

I do not believe that the man really was Count Halkar, although he had evidently persuaded Euphra that such was his name and title. I think it much more probable that, in the course of picking up a mass of trifling information about various families of distinction, for which his position of secretary in several of their houses had afforded him special facilities, he had learned something about the Halkar family, and this particular ring, of which, for some reason or other, he wanted to possess himself.

“What more can I do?” moaned Euphra, succeeding at length in raising herself to a sitting posture, and leaning thus against a tree. “I shall be found out some day. I have been already seen wandering through the house at midnight, with the heart of a thief. I hate you, Count Halkar!”

A low laugh was the count’s only reply.

“And now Lady Euphrasia herself dogs my steps, to keep me from the ring.” She gave a low cry of agony at the remembrance.

“Miss Cameron—Euphra—are you going to give way to such folly?”

“Folly! Is it not worse folly to torture a poor girl as you do me—all for a worthless ring? What can you want with the ring? I do not know that he has it even.”

“You lie. You know he has. You need not think to take me in.”

“You base man! You dare not give the lie to any but a woman.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a coward. You are afraid of Lady Euphrasia yourself. See there!”

Von Funkelstein glanced round him uneasily. It was only the moonlight on the bark of a silver birch. Conscious of having betrayed weakness, he grew spiteful.

“If you do not behave to me better, I will compel you. Rise up!”

After a moment’s hesitation, she rose.

“Put your arms round me.”

She seemed to grow to the earth, and to drag herself from it, one foot after another. But she came close up to the Bohemian, and put one arm half round him, looking to the earth all the time.

“Kiss me.”

“Count Halkar!” her voice sounded hollow and harsh, as if from a dead throat—“I will do what you please. Only release me.”

“Go then; but mind you resist me no more. I do not care for your kisses. You were ready enough once. But that idiot of a tutor has taken my place, I see.”

“Would to God I had never seen you!—never yielded to your influence over me! Swear that I shall be free if I find you the ring.”

“You find the ring first. Why should I swear? I can compel you. You know you laid yourself out to entrap me first with your arts, and I only turned upon you with mine. And you are in my power. But you shall be free, notwithstanding; and I will torture you till you free yourself. Find the ring.”

“Cruel! cruel! You are doing all you can to ruin me.”

“On the contrary, I am doing all I can to save myself. If you had loved me as you allowed me to think once, I should never have made you my tool.”

“You would all the same.”

“Take care. I am irritable to-night.”

For a few moments Euphra made no reply.

“To what will you drive me?” she said at last.

“I will not go too far. I should lose my power over you if I did. I prefer to keep it.”

“Inexorable man!”

“Yes.”

Another despairing pause.

“What am I to do?”

“Nothing. But keep yourself ready to carry out any plan that I may propose. Something will turn up, now that I have got into the house myself. Leave me to find out the means. I can expect no invention from your brains. You can go home.”

Euphra turned without another word, and went; murmuring, as if in excuse to herself:

“It is for my freedom. It is for my freedom.”

Of course this account must have come originally from Euphra herself, for there was no one else to tell it. She, at least, believed herself compelled to do what the man pleased. Some of my readers will put her down as insane. She may have been; but, for my part, I believe there is such a power of one being over another, though perhaps only in a rare contact of psychologically peculiar natures. I have testimony enough for that. She had yielded to his will once. Had she not done so, he could not have compelled her; but, having once yielded, she had not strength sufficient to free herself again. Whether even he could free her, further than by merely abstaining from the exercise of the power he had gained, I doubt much.

It is evident that he had come to the neighbourhood of Arnstead for the sake of finding her, and exercising his power over her for his own ends; that he had made her come to him once, if not oftener, before he met Hugh, and by means of his acquaintance, obtained admission into Arnstead. Once admitted, he had easily succeeded, by his efforts to please, in so far ingratiating himself with Mr. Arnold, that now the house-door stood open to him, and he had even his recognised seat at the dinner-table.

CHAPTER XXI. SPIRIT VERSUS MATERIALISM

Next this marble venomed seat, Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, I touch with chaste palms moist and cold— Now the spell hath lost his hold.

MILTON.—Comas.

Next morning Lady Emily felt better, and wanted to get up: but her eyes were still too bright, and her hands too hot; and Margaret would not hear of it.

Fond as Lady Emily was in general of Mrs. Elton’s society, she did not care to have her with her now, and got tired of her when Margaret was absent.

They had taken care not to allow Miss Cameron to enter the room; but to-day there was not much likelihood of her making the attempt, for she did not appear at breakfast, sending a message to her uncle that she had a bad headache, but hoped to take her place at the dinner-table.

During the day, Lady Emily was better, but restless by fits.

“Were you not out of the room for a little while last night, Margaret?” she said, rather suddenly.

“Yes, my lady. I told you I should have to go, perhaps.”

“I remember I thought you had gone, but I was not in the least afraid, and that dreadful man never came near me. I do not know when you returned. Perhaps I had fallen asleep; but when I thought about you next, there you were by my bedside.”