“Go then!” Her quick speech—the wild stamp of her foot—poor child, how mad she was still!
Mr. Dugdale took no notice except by a compassionate look—perhaps he, too, felt there was no time to lose. He went towards the door—she following.
“I am off now—I shall catch the train in two hours,” said he, springing on his horse in the dark wet night. “Harrie will be with you directly—only she thought I had better come first. Go in—go in—my poor child.”
Agatha obeyed mechanically, for the moment She walked about the house, in at one room and out at another, meeting no person—for Andrews had gone to call up some of the servants. The heavy quiet around stifled her. Faster and faster she walked—clutching her hands on her throat for breath—sometimes uttering, with a sort of laughing shriek, the one word in which seemed her only salvation—“Impossible!—utterly and entirely impossible!”
She sat down for a moment, trying to think over more clearly the chances of the case—but to keep still was beyond her power. She resumed that rapid walk as if she were flying through an atmosphere of invisible fiends. It felt like it.
Once, by a superhuman effort, she drove her mind to contemplate the possible—the winds, the flames, the waves, and him struggling among them. She saw the face which she had last seen so life-like—as a dead face, with its pale, pure features and fair hair. And even that face never to be again seen by her through any possible chance! For him to be blotted out altogether from the world, and she left therein! “Oh, God—oh, God!” The despairing, accusing shriek that she sent up to His mercy!—May His mercy have received and forgiven it!
She began to count up the hours that must pass before she could receive any tidings, good or ill. To stay quietly in the house and wait for them!—you might as well have told a poor wretch to sit still and wait for the bursting of a mine. No rest—no rest. The very walls of the house seemed to press upon her and hem her in. She saw a bonnet and shawl hanging up in the hall, caught both, and ran out at the front door.
Out—out under the stars. She walked with her face lifted right up to them, her eyes flashing out an insane defiance to their merciless calm. The rain fell down thick, and it was very cold, but she never thought of putting on the bonnet or the shawl; or, if she thought at all, it was with a sort of longing that the rain might come and cool her through and through, or the sharp wind pierce to her breast and kill her. Once she had a thought of running a mile or two across the hills, and leaping from some cliffs into the sea; so that, whichever way this suspense ended, she might be safely dead beforehand—dead, too, in the same ocean, washed by the same wave. All the foolish Romeo-and-Juliet-like traditions of people killing themselves on some beloved's tomb, seemed to her now perfectly real, possible, and natural. Nothing was unnatural or impossible—save living.
How to live, even for a day, an hour, in this horrible, deathly stagnation, she did not know. At last, walking on blindly through the night, she came to the termination of the Thornhurst estate. Was she to go back and lull herself into the stupor of patience?—to be kissed and wept over, and preached resignation to?—left to sit mutely in that quiet house, while he was dashed about, fighting with the sea for life?—or watching the clock's travelling round hour after hour, not knowing but that every peaceful minute might be the terrible one in which he died?
“No,” she said to herself, while the awful but delirious joy which has struck many in a similar position, struck her suddenly, “he is not dead. If he had died, he would have told me—me whom he so loved He could not die anywhere, or at any time, but in some way or other I should certainly have known it.”