Till now the dark was worn, and overhead
The lights of sunset and of sunrise mixed.—TENNYSON
At New York, Tom wrote a short letter to announce his safe arrival, and then pushed on by railway into Indiana. Winter had completely set in; and when he at length arrived at Winiamac, he found that a sleigh was a far readier mode of conveyance to Massissauga than the wagons used in summer. His drive, through the white cathedral-like arcades of forest, hung with transparent icicles, and with the deep blue sky above, becoming orange towards the west, was enjoyable; and even Massissauga itself, when its skeleton trees were like their neighbours, embellished by the pure snowy covering, looked less forlorn than when their death contrasted with the exuberant life around. He stopped at the hotel, left his baggage there, and after undergoing a catechism on his personal affairs, was directed to Mr. Muller's house, and made his way up its hard-trodden path of snow, towards the green door, at which he knocked two or three times before it was opened by a woman, whose hair and freckled skin were tinted nowhere but in Ireland.
He made a step forward out of the cutting blast into the narrow entry, and began to ask, 'Is Miss Ward here? I mean, can I see Miss Warden?' when, as if at the sound of his voice, there rang from within the door close by a shriek—one of the hoarse hysterical cries he had heard upon the day of the inquest. Without a moment's hesitation, he pushed open the door, and beheld a young lady in speechless terror hanging over the stiffened figure on the couch—the eyes wide open, the limbs straight and rigid. He sprang forward, and lifted her into a more favourable posture, hastily asking for simple remedies likely to be at hand, and producing a certain amount of revival for a few moments, though the stiffness was not passing—nor was there evidence of consciousness.
'Are you Leonard?' said Cora Muller, under her breath, in this brief interval, gazing into his face with frightened puzzled eyes.
'No; but I am come to tell her that he is free!' But the words were cut short by another terrible access, of that most distressing kind that stimulates convulsion; and again the terrified women instinctively rendered obedience to the stranger in the measures he rapidly took, and his words, 'hysteria—a form of hysteria,' were forced from him by the necessity of lessening Cora's intense alarm, so as to enable her to be effective. 'We must send for Dr. Laidlaw,' she began in the first breathing moment, and again he looked up and said, 'I am a physician!'
'Mr. Tom?' she asked with the faintest shadow of a smile; he bent his head, and that was their introduction, broken again by another frightful attack; and when quiescence, if not consciousness, was regained, Tom knelt by the sofa, gazing with a sense of heart-rending despair at the wasted features and thin hands, the waxen whiteness of the cheek, and the tokens in which he clearly read long and consuming illness as well as the overthrow of the sudden shock.
'What is this?' he asked, looking up to Cora's beautiful anxious face.
'Oh, she has been very sick, very sick,' she answered; 'it was an attack of pleurisy; but she is getting better at last, though she will not think so, and this news will make all well. Does she hear? Say it again!'
Tom shook his head, afraid of the sound of the name as yet, and scarcely durst even utter the word 'Ella' above his breath.
'She is gone out with Cousin Deborah to an apple bee,' was the reassuring answer. 'She wanted change, poor child! Is she getting better?'