"Do you not care even when you think what I kept you back from?" said Mr. Evandale. "Your mother was old, weak, dying, and you threw yourself upon her with violence. You will remember that some day, and will bless me perhaps because I withheld your hand. Your attack upon me matters nothing. I am willing to believe that you did not know what you were doing. I will leave you know—it is not seemly that we should discuss this matter any further. But, if ever you want help or counsel—and the day may come, my poor woman, when you may want both—then come to me."
He opened the door, went out, and closed it behind him, leaving Sabina Meldreth alone with the dead.
He found two or three women down-stairs already; Enid Vane must have told Polly, as she passed through the shop, that Mrs. Meldreth's end had come. As soon as he had gone, two of them went up-stairs to perform the necessary offices in the chamber of death. They found Sabina stretched on the floor in a swoon, from which it was long before she recovered.
"You wouldn't ha' thought she had so much feeling in her," said one of the women to the other, as they ministered to her wants.
Meanwhile the Rector strode down the village street, straining his eyes in the twilight, and glancing eagerly from side to side, in his endeavor to discover what had become of Miss Vane. He knew that she had probably never been out so late unattended in her life before; lonely as her existence seemed to be, she was well cared for, anxiously guarded, and surrounded by every possible protection. He had been surprised to find her in Mrs. Meldreth's cottage so late in the afternoon. Only the exigencies of the situation had prevented him from following her at once when she left the house—only the stern conviction that he must not, for the sake of Miss Vane's bodily safety and comfort, neglect Sabina Meldreth's soul. But, when he felt that his duty in the cottage was over, he sallied forth in search of Enid Vane. She had been wearing a long fur-lined cloak, he remembered, and on her head a little fur toque to match. The colors of both were dark; at a distance she could not be easily distinguished by her dress. And she had at least three-quarters of a mile to walk—through the village, down-hill by the lane, past the fir plantation where her father had been found murdered, and a little way along the high-road—before she would reach her own park gate. The Rector, like all strong men, was very tender and pitiful to the weak. The thought of her feeling nervous and frightened in the darkness of the lane was terrible to him; he felt as if she ought to be guarded and guided throughout life by the fearless and the strong.
He walked down the street—it was a long straggling street such as often forms the main thoroughfare of a country village—but he saw nothing of Enid. At the end of the street were some better-built houses, with gardens; then came the Rectory and the church. He paused instinctively at the churchyard gate. Surely he saw something moving amongst the tombs over there by the railed-in plot of ground that marked the vault, in which lay the mortal remains of Sydney and Marion Vane? Had she gone there? Was it Enid's slender form that crouched beside the railings in the attitude of helpless sorrow and despair?
The Rector did not lose a moment in finding out. He threw open the gate, dashed down the pathway, and was scarcely astonished to discover that his fancy was correct. It was Enid Vane who had found her way to her parents' grave, and had slipped down upon the frosted grass, half kneeling, half lying against the iron rails.
One glance, and Evandale's heart gave a leap of terror. Had she fainted, or was she dead? It was no warm, conscious, breathing woman whom he had found—it was a rigid image of death, as stiff, as sightless, as inanimate as the corpse that he had left behind. He bent down over her, felt her pulse, and examined the pupils of her eyes. He had had some medical training before he came to Beechfield, and his knowledge of physiological details told him that this was no common faint—that the girl was suffering from some strange cataleptic or nervous seizure, for which ordinary remedies would be of no avail.
The Rectory garden opened into the churchyard. Maurice Evandale had not a moment's hesitation in deciding what to do. He lifted the strangely rigid, strangely heavy figure in his arms, and made his way along the shadowy churchyard pathway to the garden gate. The great black yews looked grim and ghostly as he left them behind and strode into his own domain, where the flowers were all dead, and the leafless branches of the fruit-trees waved their spectral arms above him as he passed. There was something indefinably unhomelike and weird in the aspect of the most familiar places in the winter twilight. But Maurice Evandale, by an effort of his strong will, banished the fancies that came into his mind, and fixed his thoughts entirely upon the girl he was carrying. How best to restore her, what to do for her comfort and her welfare when she awoke—these were the thoughts that engrossed his attention now.
He did not go to the front-door. He went to a long window which opened upon the garden, and walked straight into his own study. A bright fire burned in the grate; a lamp was placed on the table, where books and papers were heaped in true bachelor confusion. A low broad sofa occupied one side of the room; the Rector deposited his burden upon it, and then devoted himself seriously to the consideration of the case before him.