Chapter V.
Midnight by the Slopperton Clocks.
The clouds and the sky kept their promise, and as the clocks chimed the quarter before twelve the storm broke over the steeples at Slopperton.
Blue lightning-flashes lit up Blind Peter, and attendant thunder-claps shook him to his very foundation; while a violent shower of rain gave him such a washing-down of every flagstone, chimney-pot, and door-step, as he did not often get. Slopperton in bed was almost afraid to go to sleep; and Slopperton not in bed did not seem to care about going to bed. Slopperton at supper was nervous as to handling of glittering knives and steel forks; and Slopperton going to windows to look out at the lightning was apt to withdraw hurriedly at the sight thereof. Slopperton in general was depressed by the storm; thought there would be mischief somewhere; and had a vague idea that something dreadful would happen before the night was out.
In Dr. Tappenden's quiet household there was consternation and alarm. Mr. Jabez North, the principal assistant, had gone out early in the evening, and had not returned at the appointed hour for shutting up the house. This was such an unprecedented occurrence, that it had occasioned considerable uneasiness—especially as Dr. Tappenden was away from home, and Jabez was, in a manner, deputy-master of the house. The young woman who looked after the gentlemen's wardrobes had taken compassion upon the housemaid, who sat up awaiting Mr. North's return, and had brought her workbox, and a lapful of young gentlemen's dilapidated socks, to the modest chamber in which the girl waited.
"I hope," said the housemaid, "nothing ain't happened to him through the storm. I hope he hasn't been getting under no trees."
The housemaid had a fixed idea that to go under a tree in a thunderstorm was to encounter immediate death.
"Poor dear young gentleman," said the lady of the wardrobes; "I tremble to think what can keep him out so. Such a steady young man; never known to be a minute after time either. I'm sure every sound I hear makes me expect to see him brought in on a shutter."
"Don't now, Miss Smithers!" cried the housemaid, looking behind her as if she expected to see the ghost of Jabez North pointing to a red spot on his left breast at the back of her chair. "I wish you wouldn't now! Oh, I hope he ain't been murdered. There's been such a many murders in Slopperton since I can remember. It's only three years and a half ago since a man cut his wife's throat down in Windmill Lane, because she hadn't put no salt in the saucepan when she boiled the greens."
The frightful parallel between the woman who boiled the greens without salt and Jabez North two hours after his time, struck such terror to the hearts of the young women, that they were silent for some minutes, during which they both looked uneasily at a thief in the candle which neither of them had the courage to take out—their nerves not being equal to the possible clicking of the snuffers.
"Poor young man!" said the housemaid, at last. "Do you know, Miss Smithers, I can't help thinking he has been rather low lately."
Now this word "low" admits of several applications, so Miss Smithers replied, rather indignantly,—
"Low, Sarah Anne! Not in his language, I'm sure. And as to his manners, they'd be a credit to the nobleman that wrote the letters."
"No, no, Miss Smithers; I mean his spirits. I've fancied lately he's been a fretting about something; perhaps he's in love, poor dear."
Miss Smithers coloured up. The conversation was getting interesting. Mr. North had lent her Rasselas, which she thought a story of thrilling interest; and she had kept his stockings and shirt buttons in order for three years. Such things had happened; and Mrs. Jabez North sounded more comfortable than Miss Smithers, at any rate.
"Perhaps," said Sarah Anne, rather maliciously—"perhaps he's been forgetting his situation and giving way to thoughts of marrying our young missus. She's got a deal of money, you know, Miss Smithers, though her figure ain't much to look at."
Sarah Anne's figure was plenty to look at, having a tendency to break out into luxuriance where you least expected it.
It was in vain that Sarah Anne or Miss Smithers speculated on the probable causes of the usher's absence. Midnight struck from the Dutch clock in the kitchen, the eight-day clock on the staircase, the time-piece in the drawing-room—a liberal and complicated piece of machinery which always struck eighteen to the dozen—and eventually from every clock in Slopperton; and yet there was no sign of Jabez North.
No sign of Jabez North. A white face and a pair of glazed eyes staring up at the sky, out on a dreary heath three miles from Slopperton, exposed to the fury of a pitiless storm; a man lying alone on a wretched mattress in a miserable apartment in Blind Peter—but no Jabez North
Through the heartiest storm, dripping wet with the pelting rain, the girl they have christened Sillikens hastens back to Blind Peter. The feeble glimmer of the candle, with the drooping wick sputtering in a pool of grease, is the only light which illumes that cheerless neighbourhood. The girl's heart beats with a terrible flutter as she approaches that light, for an agonizing doubt is in her soul about that other light which she left so feebly burning, and which may be now extinct. But she takes courage; and pushing open the door, which opposes neither bolts nor bars to any deluded votary of Mercury, she enters the dimly-lighted room. The man lies with his face turned to the wall; the old woman is seated by the hearth, on which a dull and struggling flame is burning. She has on the table among the medicine-bottles, another, which no doubt contains spirits, for she has a broken teacup in her hand, from which ever and anon she sips consolation, for it is evident she has been crying.
"Mother, how is he—how is he?" the girl asks, with a hurried agitation painful to witness, since it reveals how much she dreads the answer.
"Better, deary, better—Oh, ever so much better," the old woman answers in a crying voice, and with another application to the broken teacup.
"Better! thank Heaven!—thank Heaven!" and the girl, stealing softly to the bed-side, bends down and listens to the sick man's breathing, which is feeble, but regular.
"He seems very fast asleep, grandmother. Has he been sleeping all the time?"
"Since when, deary?"
"Since I went out. Where's the doctor?"
"Gone, deary. Oh, my blessed boy, to think that it should come to this, and his dead mother was my only child! dear, dear!" And the old woman burst out crying, only choking her sobs by the aid of the teacup.
"But he's better, grandmother; perhaps he'll get over it now. I always said he would. Oh, I'm so glad—so glad." The girl sat down in her wet garments, of which she never once thought, on the little stool by the side of the bed. Presently the sick man turned round and opened his eyes.
"You've been away a long time, lass," he said.
Something in his voice, or in his way of speaking, she did not know which, startled her; but she wound her arm round his neck, and said—
"Jim, my own dear Jim, the danger's past. The black gulf you've been looking down is closed for these many happy years to come, and maybe the sun will shine on our wedding-day yet."
"Maybe, lass—maybe. But tell me, what's the time?"
"Never mind the time, Jim. Very late, and a very dreadful night; but no matter for that! You're better, Jim; and if the sun never shone upon the earth again, I don't think I should be able to be sorry, now you are safe."
"Are all the lights out in Blind Peter, lass?" he asked.
"All the lights out? Yes, Jim—these two hours. But why do you ask?"
"And in Slopperton did you meet many people, lass?"
"Not half-a-dozen in all the streets. Nobody would be out in such a night, Jim, that could help it."
He turned his face to the wall again, and seemed to sleep. The old woman kept moaning and mumbling over the broken teacup,—
"To think that my blessed boy should come to this—on such a night too, on such a night!"
The storm raged with unabated fury, and the rain pouring in at the dilapidated door threatened to flood the room. Presently the sick man raised his head a little way from the pillow.
"Lass," he said, "could you get me a drop o' wine? I think, if I could drink a drop o' wine, it would put some strength into me somehow."
"Grandmother," said the girl, "can I get him any? You've got some money; it's only just gone twelve; I can get in at the public-house. I will get in, if I knock them up, to get a drop o' wine for Jim."
The old woman fumbled among her rags and produced a sixpence, part of the money given her from the slender purse of the benevolent Jabez, and the girl hurried away to fetch the wine.
The public-house was called the Seven Stars; the seven stars being represented on a signboard in such a manner as to bear rather a striking resemblance to seven yellow hot-cross buns on a very blue background. The landlady of the Seven Stars was putting her hair in papers when the girl called Sillikens invaded the sanctity of her private life. Why she underwent the pain and grief of curling her hair for the admiration of such a neighbourhood as Blind Peter is one of those enigmas of this dreary existence to solve which the Œdipus has not yet appeared. I don't suppose she much cared about suspending her toilet, and opening her bar, for the purpose of selling sixpennyworth of port wine; but when she heard it was for a sick man, she did not grumble. The girl thanked her heartily, and hurried homewards with her pitiful measure of wine.
Through the pitiless rain, and under the dark sky, it was almost impossible to see your hand before you; but as Sillikens entered the mouth of Blind Peter, a flash of lightning revealed to her the figure of a man gliding with a soft step between the broken iron railings. In the instantaneous glimpse she caught of him under the blue light, something familiar in his face or form quickened the beating of her heart, and made her turn to look back at him; but it was too dark for her to see more than the indistinct figure of a man hurrying away in the direction of Slopperton. Wondering who could be leaving Blind Peter on such a night and at such an hour, she hastened back to carry her lover the wine.
The old woman still sat before the hearth. The sputtering candle had gone out, and the light from the miserable little fire only revealed the dark outlines of the wretched furniture and the figure of Jim's grandmother, looking, as she sat mumbling over the broken teacup, like a wicked witch performing an incantation over a portable cauldron.
The girl hurried to the bed-side—the sick man was not there.
"Grandmother! Jim—Jim! Where is he?" she asked, in an alarmed voice; for the figure she had met hurrying through the storm flashed upon her with a strange distinctness. "Jim! Grandmother! tell me where he is, or I shall go mad! Not gone—not gone out on such a night as this, and in a burning fever?"
"Yes, lass, he's gone. My precious boy, my darling boy. His dead mother was my only child, and he's gone for ever and ever, and on this dreadful night. I'm a miserable old woman."
No other explanation than this, no other words than these, chattered and muttered again and again, could the wretched girl extort from the old woman, who, half imbecile and more than half tipsy, sat grinning and grunting over the teacup till she fell asleep in a heap on the cold damp hearth, still hugging the empty teacup, and still muttering, even in her sleep,—
"His dead mother was my only child; and it's very cruel it should come to this at last, and on such a night."