“Master Vincent is ill, and mistress went herself for the doctor,” replied the trembling Martha, terrified both by his tone and his eye. “She could not get on through the snow; I saw her slide down the bank there; I saw her go into the tunnel.”
The words seemed to sear Effingham’s brain. Without waiting to hear more, with the gesture of a madman he rushed forward, as if impelled by irresistible impulse, to fly to the succour of his wife. Then he suddenly stopped, and called loudly for a torch.
“There’s no torch, but,—but a lantern.”
“Bring it, for the love of Heaven!” cried the miserable husband. The girl flew to obey, while he stood almost stamping with fierce impatience, as if every moment of delay were spent on the rack.
“My dear sir,” began the compassionate doctor,—
He was interrupted by Effingham, who said, in a hoarse, excited tone, “My boy, she says, is ill. Providence has brought you here; see to him—save him! I—I have a more terrible mission to perform! O God! preserve my brain from distraction!”
Martha brought the lantern after a brief absence, which seemed to the husband interminable. He snatched it from her hand, with the question, which his bloodless lips had hardly the power to articulate, “Did any train pass after she left this place?”
“Yes; one!”
Without uttering another word Effingham sprang forward on his fearful quest.
The snow displaced on the top of the bank and down its side, and the scattered flakes on the cutting below, served but as too sure guides. To plunge down the steep descent was the work of a moment. Effingham was now upon the line where not two hours previously Clemence had stood and trembled. The blackness of the opening before him recalled to him, with a sense of unutterable horror, the cry which had pierced his ear in the tunnel. Effingham loved his young wife—fondly, passionately loved. If any emotion of displeasure towards her were remembered in that awful hour, it was but to intensify the anguish of remorse. He felt himself to be a wretch marked by the justice of Heaven for the keenest torment that mortal can bear and live. Loss of fortune, friends, fame—what was all that to the misery which he might now be doomed to endure! He might find her—his loved, his beautiful Clemence, the pride of his life, the treasure of his heart—oh, how he might find her he dared not think. On he pressed, the dim light from his lantern gleaming on the cold iron below, the stony walls, the damp, dripping roof; but there was yet no sign of a human form.