CHAPTER IV.

WAITING FOR BELL.

The fire threw its glow on Mrs. Bell's kitchen--kitchen and sitting-room combined--lighting up the strip of bright carpet before the fender and the red-tiled floor; playing on the plates and dishes on the dresser, and on the blue hyacinth glasses in the window, now closed in by the outer shutters. Stout Mrs. Bell sat by the round table in her white apron and mob-cap, plying her knitting-needles. On the other side the hearth sat a neighbour, one Nancy Tomson, a tall, thin Cornish woman in a check apron, with projecting teeth and a high nose, who had come in for a chat. On the table waited the supper of bread-and-cheese; and a candle stood ready for lighting.

The clock struck nine. Mrs. Bell looked up as though the sound half startled her.

"Who'd heve thought it!" cried the visitor, whose chatter had been going incessantly for the last hour, causing the time to pass quickly. "Be they clock too fast, Dame Bell?"

"No," said the dame. "It's right by the church."

"Well, I'd never heve said it were nine. Your folks es late. I wonder where they be that they don't come hoam."

"No need to wonder," returned Mrs. Bell, in sharp tones, meant for the absentees. "Rosaline's staying with poor Granny Sandon, who seems to have nobody else to stay with her. As to Bell, he is off again to the Golden Shaft."

"You said he had comed in."

"He did come in: and I thought he had come in for good. But he didn't stay a minute; he must needs tramp out again. And he was further gone, Nancy Tomson, than I've seen him these three years."

Dame Bell plied her needles vigorously, as if her temper had got down into her fingers. The visitor plunged into renewed conversation, chiefly turning upon that interesting episode, the encounter between Janes and his wife. At half-past nine, Mrs. Bell put down her knitting and rose from her seat. She was growing uneasy.

"What can keep Rosaline? She never stays out so late as this, let Granny Sandon want her ever so. I'll take a look out and see if I can see her."

Unbolting and opening the door she admitted a flood of pale moonlight: pale, compared with the ruddier glow of the interior. Mrs. Bell peered out across the Bare Plain in the direction of Trennach; and Nancy Tomson, who was always ready for any divertisement, advanced and stretched her long neck over Dame Bell's shoulder.

"It's a rare light night," she said. "But I don't see nobody coming, Mrs. Bell. They keeps to the Golden Shaaft."

Feeling the air cold after the hot fire, Nancy Tomson withdrew indoors again. She was in no hurry to be gone. Her husband made one of the company at the Golden Shaft to-night, and this warm domicile was pleasanter than her own. Dame Bell was about to shut the door, when a faint sound caused her to look quickly out again, and advance somewhat farther than she did before. Leaning against the wall on the other side the window was a dark object: and, to Mrs. Bell's intense surprise, she discovered it to be Rosaline.

Rosaline, in what appeared to be the very utmost abandonment of grief or of terror. Her hands were clasped, her face was bent down. Every laboured breath she took seemed to come forth with suppressed anguish.

"Why, child, what on earth's the matter?" ejaculated the mother. "What are you staying there for?"

The words quickly brought out Nancy Tomson. Her exclamations, when she saw Rosaline, might almost have been heard at Trennach.

Rosaline's moans subsided into silence. She slowly moved from the wall, and they helped her indoors. Her face was white as that of the dead, and appeared to have a nameless horror in it. She sat down on the first chair she came to, put her arms on the table, and her head upon them, so that her countenance was hidden. The two women, closing the front-door, stood gazing at her with the most intense curiosity.

"She heve been frighted," whispered Nancy Tomson. And it did indeed look like it. Mrs. Bell, however, negatived the suggestion.

"Frighted! What is there to frighten her? What's the matter, Rosaline?" she continued, somewhat sharply. "Be you struck mooney, child?"

Nancy Tomson was one who liked her own opinion, and held to the fright. She advanced a step or two nearer Rosaline, dropping her voice to a low key.

"Heve you seen anything o' Dan Sandon? Maybe hes ghost shawed itself to you as you come by the Bottomless Shaaft?"

The words seemed to affect Rosaline so strongly that the table, not a very substantial one, vibrated beneath her weight.

"Then just you tell us whaat else it es," pursued Nancy Tomson, eager for enlightenment--for Rosaline had made a movement in the negative as to Dan Sandon's ghost. "Sure," added the woman to Mrs. Bell, "sure Janes and her be not a-fighting again! Sure he heven't been and killed her! Is it _that_ whaat heve frighted you, Rosaline?"

"No, no," murmured Rosaline.

"Well, it must be something or t'other," urged the woman, beside herself with curiosity. "One caan't be frighted to death for nothing. Heve ye faaled down and hurted yerself?"

An idea, like an inspiration, seized upon Mrs. Bell. And it seemed to her so certain to be the true one that she only wondered she had not thought of it before. She laid her hand upon her daughter's shoulder.

"Rosaline! You have heard the Seven Whistlers!"

A slight pause. Rosaline neither stirred nor spoke. To Nancy Tomson the suggestion cleared up the mystery.

"_Thaat's it_," she cried emphatically. "Where was aal my wits, I wonder, thaat I never remembered they? Now doan't you go for to deny it, Rosaline Bell: you have heared they Seven Whistlers, and gashly things they be."

Another pause. A shiver. And then Rosaline slowly lifted her white face.

"Yes," she answered. "The Seven Whistlers." And the avowal struck such consternation on her hearers, although the suggestion had first come from them, that they became dumb.

"Father heard them, you know," went on Rosaline, a look of terror in her eyes, and a dreamy, far-off sound in her voice. "Father heard them. And they mean ill-luck."

"They bode death: as some says," spoke Nancy Tomson, lowering her voice to an appropriate key.

"Yes," repeated Rosaline, in a tone of sad wailing. "Yes: they bode death. Oh, mother! mother!"

But now, Mrs. Bell, although given, like her neighbours, to putting some faith in the Seven Whistlers: for example is contagious: was by no means one to be overcome with the fear of them. Rather was the superstition regarded by her as a prolific theme for gossip, and she altogether disapproved of the men's making it an excuse for idleness. Had she heard the Whistlers with her own ears, it would not have moved her much. Of course she did not particularly like the Whistlers; she was willing to believe that they were in some mysterious way the harbingers of ill-luck; and the discomfort evinced by her husband on Sunday night, when he returned home after hearing the sounds, had in a degree imparted discomfort to herself. But, that any one should be put into a state of terror by them, such as this now displayed by Rosaline, she looked upon as absurd and unreasonable.

"Don't take on like that, child!" she rebuked. "You must be silly. They don't bode _your_ death: never fear. I'll warm you a cup o' pea-soup. There's some left in the crock."

She bustled into the back-kitchen for the soup and a saucepan. Rosaline kept her head down: deep, laboured breathings agitated her. Nancy Tomson stood looking on, her arms folded in her check apron.

"Whereabouts did ye hear they Whistlers, Rosaline?" she asked at length.

But there was no answer.

"On the Bare Plain, I take it," resumed the woman. "Were't a-nigh they mounds by the Shaaft? Sounds echoes in they zigzag paths rarely. I've heard the wind a-whistling like anything there afore now. She be a pewerly lonesome consarn, thaat Shaaft, for waun who has to paas her at night alone."

A moan, telling of the sharpest mental agony, broke from Rosaline. Dame Bell heard it as she was coming in. In the midst of her sympathy, it angered her.

"Rosaline, I won't have this. There's reason in roasting of eggs. We shall have your father here directly, and what will he say? I can tell you, he was bad enough when he went out. Come! just rouse yourself."

"Father heard the Whistlers, and--they--bode--death!" shivered Rosaline.

"They don't bode yours, I say," repeated Dame Bell, losing patience. "Do you suppose death comes to every person who hears the Whistlers?--or ill-luck either?"

"No, no," assented Nancy Tomson, for Rosaline did not speak. "For waun that faals into ill-luck after hearing they Whistlers, ten escapes. I've knowed a whole crowd o' they men hear the sounds, and nought heve come on't to any waun on 'em."

"And that's quite true," said Mrs. Bell.

Rosaline could not be persuaded to try the soup. It was impossible that she could swallow it, she said. Taking a candle; she went up to her room; to bed, as her mother supposed.

"And the best place for her," remarked Dame Bell. "To think of her getting a fright like this!"

But poor Rosaline did not go to bed, and did not undress. Taking her shoes off, that she might not be heard, she began to pace the few yards of her narrow chamber, to and fro, to and fro, from wall to wall, in an anguish the like of which has rarely been felt on earth. She was living over again the night's meeting at the Bottomless Shaft and its frightful ending: she saw the white, upturned, agonized face, and heard the awful cry of despair of him who was falling into its pitiless depths, and was now lying there, dead: and it seemed to her that she, herself, must die of it.

The clock struck ten, and Nancy Tomson tore herself away from the warm and hospitable kitchen, after regaling herself upon the soup rejected by Rosaline. And Dame Bell sat on, knitting, and waiting for her husband.

When Rosaline, her hands lifted in distress, tore away that evening from the Bottomless Shaft, and the tragedy that had been enacted there, and went flying over the Bare Plain towards home, Frank Raynor, recovering from the horror which had well-nigh stunned his faculties, went after her. Two or three times he attempted to say a word to her, but she took no notice of him; only sped the quicker, if that were possible. She never answered; it was as if she did not hear. When they reached the narrow path that branched off to the cottages, there she stopped, and turned towards him.

"We part here. Part for ever.

"Are you going home?" he asked.

"Where else should I go?" she rejoined, in anguish. "Where else can I go?"

"I will see you safe to the door.

"No. No! Good-bye."

And, throwing up her hands, as if to ward him off, she would have sped onwards. But Frank Raynor could not part thus: he had something to say, and detained her, holding her hands tightly. A few hasty words passed between them, and then she was at liberty to go on. He stood watching her until she drew near to her own door, and then turned back on his way across the plain.

In his whole life Francis Raynor had never felt as he was feeling now. An awful weight had settled upon his soul. His friends had been wont to say that no calamity upon earth could bring down Frank's exuberant spirits, or change the lightness of his ways. But something had been found to do it now. Little less agitated was he than Rosaline; the sense of horror upon him was the same as hers.

He was now passing the fatal spot, the Bottomless Shaft; its surrounding hillocks shone out in the moonlight. Frank turned his eyes that way, and stood still to gaze. Of their own accord, and as if some fascination impelled him against his will, his steps moved thitherwards.

With a livid face, and noiseless feet, and a heart that ceased for the moment to beat, he took the first narrow zigzag between two of the mounds. And--but what was it that met his gaze? As he came in view of the Shaft, he saw the figure of a man standing on its brink. The sight was so utterly unexpected, and so unlikely, that Frank stood still, scarcely believing it to be reality. For one blissful moment he lost sight of impossibilities, and did indeed think it must be Josiah Bell.

Only for an instant. The truth returned to his mind in all its wretchedness, together with the recognition of Mr. Blase Pellet. Mr. Blase was gingerly bending forward, but with the utmost caution, and looking down into the pit. As if he were listening for what might be to be heard there: just as the unhappy Rosaline had professed to listen a few minutes before.

Frank had not made any noise; and, even though he had, a strong gust of wind, just then sweeping the mounds, deadened all sound but its own. But, with that subtle instinct that warns us sometimes of a human presence, Blase Pellet turned sharply round, and saw him. Not a word passed. Frank drew silently back--though he knew the man had recognized him--and pursued his way over the Plain.

He guessed how it was. When he and Rosaline had been waiting amidst the mounds for Blase Pellet to pass, Blase had not passed. Blase must have seen them cross over to the spot in the moonlight; and, instead of continuing his route, had stealthily crossed after them and concealed himself in one or other of the narrow zigzags. He must have remained there until now. How much had he seen? How much did he know? If anything had been capable of adding to the weight of perplexity and trouble that had fallen on Frank Raynor, it would be this. He groaned in spirit he pursued his way homeward.

"How late you are, Frank!"

The words, spoken by Edina, met him as he entered. Hearing him come in, she had opened the door of the sitting-room. In the bewildering confusion of his mind, the perplexity as to the future, the sudden shock of the one moment's calamity, which might change the whole current of his future life, Frank Raynor had lost all recollection of the engagement for the evening. The appearance of Edina recalled it to him.

She was in evening dress: though very sober dress. A plain grey silk, its low body and short sleeves trimmed with a little white lace; a gold chain and locket on her neck; and bracelets of not much value. Quite ready, all but her gloves.

"Are--are you going, Edina?"

"_Going!_" replied Edina. "Of course I am going. You are going also, are you not?"

Frank pushed his hair off his brow. The gay scene at The Mount, and the dreadful scene in which he had just been an actor, struck upon him as being frightfully incongruous. Edina was gazing at him: she detected some curious change in his manner, and she saw that he was looking very pale.

"Is anything the matter, Frank? Are you not well?"

"Oh, I am quite well."

"Surely that poor woman is not dead?"

"What woman?" asked Frank, his wits still wool-gathering. Dr. Raynor, leaving his chair by the parlour-fire, had also come to the door, and was looking on.

"Have you been to see more than one woman?" said Edina. "I meant Molly Janes."

"Oh--ay--yes," returned Frank, passing his hand over his perplexed brow. "She'll be all right in a few days. There's no very serious damage done."

"What has made you so long, then?" questioned the doctor.

"I--did not know it was late," was the only excuse poor Frank could think of, as he turned from the steady gaze of Edina: though he might have urged that plastering up Mrs. Molly's wounds had taken time. And in point of fact he did not, even yet, know whether it was late or early.

"Pray make haste, Frank," said Edina. "You can dress quickly when you like. I did not wish, you know, to be so late as this."

He turned to seek his room. There was no help for it: he must go to this revelry. Edina could not go alone: and, indeed, he had no plea for declining to accompany her. Not until he was taking off his coat did he remember the blow on his shoulder. Frank Raynor, in his mind's grievous trouble, had neither felt the pain left by the blow, nor remembered that he had received one.

Yet it was a pretty severe stroke, and the shoulder on which it fell was stiff and aching. Frank, his coat off, was passing his hand gently over the place, perhaps to ascertain the extent of the damage, when the door was tapped at and then opened by Edina.

"I have brought you a flower for your button-hole, Frank."

It was a hot-house flower, white and beautiful as wax. Dr. Raynor had brought it from a patient's house where he had been in the afternoon, and Edina had kept it until the last moment as a small surprise to Frank. He took it mechanically; thanking her, it is true, but very tamely, his thoughts evidently far away. Edina could only note the change: what had become of Frank's light-heartedness?

"Is anything wrong with your shoulder?"

"It has a bit of a bruise, I think," he carelessly answered, putting the flower down on his dressing-table.

She shut the door, and Frank went on dressing, always mechanically. How many nights, and days, and weeks, and years, would it be before his mind would lose the horror of the recent scene!

"I wish to Heaven that she-demon, Molly Janes, had been _there!_" he cried, stamping his foot on the floor in a sudden access of grief and passion. "But for her vagaries, I should not have been called out this evening, and this frightful calamity would not have happened!"

Edina was ready when he went down, cloaked and shawled, a warm hood over her smooth brown hair. The doctor did not keep a close carriage; such a thing as a fly was not to be had at Trennach; and so they had to walk. Mrs. St. Clare had graciously intimated that she would send her carriage for Miss Raynor if the night turned out a bad one. But the night was bright and fine.

"You will be _sure_ not to sit up for us, papa," said Edina, while Frank was putting on his overcoat. "It is quite uncertain what time we shall return home."

"No, no, child; I shall not sit up."

When they came to the end of the village, Frank turned on to the roadway, at the back of the parsonage. Edina, who was on his arm, asked him why he did so: the Bare Plain was the nearer way.

"But this is less dreary," was his answer. "We shall be there soon enough."

"Nay, I think the Bare Plain far less dreary than the road: especially on such a night as this," said Edina. "Here we are over-shadowed by trees: on the Plain we have the full moonlight."

He said no more: only kept on his way. It did not matter; it would make only about three minutes' difference. Edina stepped out cheerfully; she never made a fuss over trifles. By-and-by, she began to wonder at his silence. It was very unusual.

"Have you a headache, Frank?"

"No. Yes. Just a little."

Edina said nothing to the contradictory answer. Something unusual and unpleasant had decidedly occurred to him.

"How did you bruise your shoulder?" she presently asked.

"Oh--gave it a knock," he said, after the slightest possible pause. "My shoulder's all right, Edina: don't talk about it. Much better than that confounded Molly Janes's bruises are."

And with the sharp words, sounding so strangely from Frank's good-natured lips, Edina gathered the notion that the grievance was in some way connected with Molly Janes; perhaps the damaged shoulder also. Possibly she had turned obstreperous under the young doctor's hands and had shown fight to him as well as to her husband.

The Mount burst upon them in a blaze of light. Plants, festoons, music, brilliancy! As they were entering the chief reception-room, out-door wrappings removed, Edina missed the beautiful white flower: Frank's coat was unadorned.

"Frank! what have you done with your flower?"

His eyes wandered to the flowers decorating the rooms, and then to his button-hole, all in an absent sort of way that surprised Miss Raynor.

"I fear I must have forgotten it, Edina. I wish you had worn it yourself: it would have been more appropriate. How well it would have looked in your hair!"

"Fancy me with flowers in my hair!" laughed Edina. "But, Frank, I think Molly Janes must have scared some of your wits away."

Their greeting to Mrs. St. Clare over, Frank found a seat for Edina, and stood back himself in a corner, behind a remote door. How terribly this scene of worldly excitement contrasted with the one enacted so short a time ago! He was living it, perforce, over again; going through its short-lived action, that had all been over in one or two fatal moments: this, before him, seemed as a dream. The gaily-robed women sweeping past him with light laughter; the gleam of jewels; the pomp and pageantry: all seemed but the shifting scenes of a panorama. Frank could have groaned aloud at the bitter mockery: here life, gay, heedless, joyous: there DEATH; death violent and sudden. Never before, throughout his days, had the solemn responsibilities of this world and of the next so painfully pressed themselves upon him in all their dread reality.

"Oh, Mr. Raynor! I thought you were not coming! Have you been here long?"

The emotional words came from a fair girl in a cloud of white--Daisy St. Clare. Frank's hand went forward to meet the one held out to him: but never a smile crossed his face.

"How long have you been here, Mr. Raynor?"

"How long? I am not sure. Half-an-hour, I think."

"Have you been dancing?"

"Oh no. I have been standing here."

"To hide yourself? I really should not have seen you but that I am looking everywhere for Lydia's card, which she has lost."

He did not answer: his head was throbbing, his heart beating. Daisy thought him very silent.

"I have had my dance with Sir Paul Trellasis," said Daisy, toying with her own card, a blush on her face, and her eyes cast down.

At any other moment Frank would have read the signs, and taken the hint: she was ready to dance with _him_. But he never asked her: he did not take the gilded leaves and pencil into his own hands and write down his name as many times as he pleased. He simply stood still, gazing out with vacant eyes and a sad look on his face. Daisy at length glanced up at him.

"Are you ill?" she inquired.

"No; only tired."

"Too tired to dance?" she ventured to ask, after a pause, her pulses quickening a little as she put the suggestive question.

"Yes. I cannot dance to-night, Miss Margaret."

"Oh, but why?"

His breath was coming a little quickly with emotion. Not caused by Daisy, and her hope of dancing; but by that terrible _recollection_. Subduing his tones as far as possible, he spoke.

"Pray forgive me, Miss Margaret: I really cannot dance to-night."

And the cold demeanour, the discouraging words, threw a chill upon her heart. What had she done to him, that he should change like this? With a bearing that sought to be proud, but a quivering lip, Margaret turned away.

He caught her eye as she was doing so; caught the expression of her face, and read its bitter disappointment. The next moment he was bending over her, pressing her hand within his.

"Forgive me, Daisy," he whispered, in pleading tones. "Indeed it is not caprice: I--I cannot dance to-night. Go and dance to your heart's content, and let me hide myself here until Miss Raynor is ready to leave you. The kindest thing you can do is to take no further notice of me."

He released her hand as he spoke, and stood back again in his dark corner. Margaret turned away with a sigh. Her pleasure in the evening had flown.

"And he never wished me any good wishes! It might just as well not have been my birthday."