CHAPTER IV.

_JANE'S REVENGE._

For very fear unnethes may she go, She weeped, wailed, all a day or two, And swooned, that it ruthe was to see.

Jane Rodgers had discussed the bacon, and, as she was a tidy woman, the plate was put carefully aside for washing while she ruminated quietly over her last cup of tea--a particularly good one, black as ink, hot as an earthenware pot that had been some time on the hob could make it, rendered delicate by a few drops of rich, yellow cream, and extremely palatable by two lumps of white sugar.

Jane was not always so extravagant, but tea was her weak point. Her hard face looked almost pleasant for the moment, she was so thoroughly comfortable.

Apparently the meditations that enlivened the kindly cup were of an agreeable nature, for she smiled once or twice, and occasionally cast a glance of infinite content on the dresser, where, nestling among the bright crockery, lay a little knitted purse, from the meshes of which something closely resembling yellow gold was gleaming. A large black cat was purring by the fire; in her satisfaction Jane stooped and stroked its soft fur caressingly. But nothing in the house seemed to be stirring, and, in spite of her pleasant reflections and the abundant comfort that surrounded her, Jane began to feel, as the darkness gathered, a certain creeping sense of uneasiness. She addressed the cat, for when people feel this loneliness even a dumb creature seems a companion. "Pussy," she said, stooping again to caress it, "it's lonesome here to-night. What's _she_ doing, I wonder, up there by herself? We'll light the candles and take them up."

As Jane spoke she rose from her seat and stretched out her hand to take the lucifer matches from the chimney-piece. But she did not draw it back so quickly. Her hand was stayed by a sudden horror. The stillness in the house was broken. There came from overhead the sound of a dull thud, as if a body had fallen heavily to the ground. The sound was followed by a silence more oppressive even than before.

Jane Rodgers was a coward, and like many uneducated people extremely superstitious. The sound came from the room where she had left her mistress about half an hour before, "looking," as she had expressed it, "rather queer." She was the only person in the room; the sound had come from a heavy fall. It must, then, have been Mrs. Grey herself who had fallen. Had the trouble crushed her utterly? Was she dead? The bare supposition sent every particle of blood from Jane's face. She turned as pale as death. There rose up, in a grim host before her mind, some of the many ghost-stories that are the terror of the ignorant. If she were dead she would certainly return again to haunt the unfaithful servant, for Jane had a vague idea that death could clear up mysteries. And in what form would the injured lady come? Perhaps every evening at nightfall that sound of heavy falling would be heard, only muffled and terror-laden; perhaps as a sheeted ghost she would haunt the bedside of her unfaithful servant; perhaps--But Jane could scarcely bear to conjecture further; even certainty, however dreadful, would be better than this vague sense of horror.

With a hand made tremulous by fear she lit a candle. From Ajax downward human nature is the same. Whatever be the danger, darkness gives it an added horror. Jane Rodgers with her candle in her hand felt much braver than Jane Rodgers in the dark.

She paused for a moment on the threshold of Mrs. Grey's sitting-room, and applied first her ear and then her eye to the keyhole. Her ear told her that there was within the room a silence as of death; her eye could distinguish nothing through the gloom. In her superstitious horror she was on the point of running away from the door and from the house, but there came another dim perspective of future uneasiness to delay her.

If the lady were indeed dead--and Jane had almost come to this conclusion--it was a fact that could not be hidden. Her body would be found, then the neighbors would talk, the inquest would follow, and the cross-examination about her own whereabouts, as the landlady and servant, at the time of the accident. How would she be able to stand this? Then, if it should be found out that she, the pattern of strong-mindedness, she who talked in the village about her experience and knowledge of the world, who was known far and near as a person equal to any emergency--that she had turned tail like a frightened dog and fled from imaginary dangers, how would she bear the ridicule and contempt of her fellows?

These last considerations decided her; she opened the door of her mistress's sitting-room and peered in cautiously.

What she saw realized for the moment her worst fears. Margaret was stretched on the carpet rigid and motionless, her hands were clenched, her feet were drawn up under her; the attitude was that of one who had suddenly yielded in a struggle with dire agony.

Shading her candle with her hand, for the night-winds were sweeping through the room, and with a face almost as white as that she looked on, Jane Rodgers crept near to the prostrate lady. Jane had seen something of illness, and in her days of domestic service had been considered a good nurse; indeed, she had looked, and looked unflinchingly, on the face of death itself more than once in her life. What alarmed her so much on this occasion was the attendant circumstances, which had called into play the cowardly and superstitious side of her nature. The white face of her wronged mistress seemed to call for vengeance, while something whispered to Jane that the vengeance would come, and in a terrible form.

But as she drew near to Margaret her terror grew less. Her experienced eye, as soon as she was sufficiently herself to look at the matter calmly, told her that this was not death, but only a kind of fainting-fit, produced probably by strong mental excitement. Her first feeling was one of intense relief--her second, of indignation against the unconscious cause of her alarm.

"A body would think," she muttered, "that she'd done it a purpose."

As she spoke she lifted the fainting lady--without much difficulty, for Margaret had grown very thin, and Jane's physical strength was extraordinary--and laid her on the bed in the next room. Then with some roughness she proceeded to use the various remedies--splashed water in unnecessary quantities into her mistress's face, and rubbed Margaret's soft palms with her bony fingers.

It was a rough and ready mode of proceeding, but it proved effectual. Margaret opened her eyes and looked round her, perfectly bewildered at her position. Jane Rodgers's hard face was the first object that met her gaze; feeling round her, she discovered that water was dripping from her face and hair.

She tried to rise. "Where am I?" she said faintly.

"Lie still," replied Jane authoritatively, holding her down with that vice-like grasp which is so irritating to the weak. "You've been and fainted," she continued sullenly--"Goodness knows for why--and frightening the very breath out of my body; but if this kind of thing is to go on, you must find some other place, or else get a woman in. I've too much to do in the house to be giving _my_ time continual to nurse-tending."

The rude speech was almost lost upon Margaret, for memory was awaking from its sleep; the events of the day were returning gradually to her mind. "Yes," she said slowly; "I remember now. I suppose I fainted." Then rising to a sitting posture she fixed her large eyes on her servant's face.

The face was so white in its strange chiselled beauty, the eyes were so wild and mournful, that for the moment Jane's superstitious fears returned.

"Lor!" she said hastily, "_don't_ look at a body like that, there's a dear. Come--Miss Laura'll come back, never you fear. Children isn't lost in that way."

"Where _is_ Miss Laura gone?" Margaret's voice was very low, her eyes were still fixed on her servant's face.

Jane placed the candle on the table and turned aside to pull down the window-blind and arrange the curtains. "I'll tell you all about it," she said soothingly, "if you'll lie down quiet. Miss Laura, she came in alone, and I give her her dinner; after dinner she sits down with her picture-book. Presently a gentleman came in at the garden-gate; I, as it might be in the kitchen, see Miss Laura, from the window, a running out, quite pleased like to meet him. Them two go into the sitting-room, and then Miss Laura, she come running down into the kitchen. 'Jane,' she says, 'my hat, quick; it's my papa, and we're going to meet mamma on the sands,' Miss Laura, as your orders is, mustn't never be contradicted, so I get her hat, and off they go together through the garden-gate. I see them walk along the sands, and thinks I to myself, 'I'll get tea ready, for they'll find missis, and all come in together.' So now you know as much as I do, for Miss Laura ain't come back all the afternoon."

As Jane spoke she turned her face, which expressed nothing but conscious virtue, to her mistress. Margaret was writhing on the bed as if she had been suffering from some keen physical pain.

"What was he like--this gentleman who came in I mean?" she asked in a low, weak voice. A last hope, a very faint one, was struggling with her misery.

"Difficult to say _exact_," replied Jane, rather hesitatingly; then, as though repeating a lesson, "He be tall, as far as I remember, and good-looking, dark hair and whiskers, and eyes like Miss Laura's own."

It was all Margaret wanted to know. "Thank you, Jane," she replied quietly, "you may go now. Don't be alarmed," she continued, half smiling, as the woman hesitated on the threshold, "I shall not faint again."

"But you'll take something," said Jane, a certain feeling of compunction pricking the small remnant of a heart she still possessed; "come, have a glass of wine, like a dear."

"You may bring a glass and put it down by the bedside," she replied, so calmly that Jane went away quite bewildered and a little frightened still. "There," when she returned with the glass, "that will do; thank you. Now good-night." When Jane had left her Margaret looked round, and her worst enemy would have felt a pang of remorse could he have noted the white, haggard desolation which that day's suffering had left upon her face. Holding by the bed-post for support, she raised herself and felt along by the bits of furniture till she came to Laura's little cot. There she paused. Kneeling down beside it, she kissed the pillow where the child's head had rested only the night before.

"My Laura," she murmured faintly, "my child--mine--mine;" and then again, "His, not mine--mine no longer. God forgive me! I did not prize my treasure, and now it is taken from me for ever."

The little pillow was clasped to the breast of the bereaved mother as if it had been her child, for she scarcely knew what she was doing; that torpor of brain had seized her once more. Sinking to the ground, she rocked it to and fro in her arms, murmuring over it soft words of endearment.

And thus at last sleep, the nursing-mother of the wretched, found Margaret Grey. Well for her that it came when it did, for her mind could scarcely have borne at this time a more continued pressure. With her cheek resting on the pillow, which was wet with her abundant tears, and her back against the iron supports of her child's bed, Margaret forgot all her sorrow for the time in the arms of "Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep."