"Once before I asked myself," she muttered, "if I was going mad. I did not feel more like it then than now--not so like it, indeed. I knew what he was doing then, I had found him out. But I don't know now--I don't know now. I am in the dark, and the tide is rising."
Jim came back from his errand. He had been civilly answered by a woman-servant. Mr. Felton was expected in a few days; the exact day was not yet named. No letters had been received for him. He had sent no orders relative to the forwarding of any. Having delivered his message so far, Jim Swain hesitated. Harriet understood the reticence, and spared a momentary thought for passing wonderment at this little touch of delicacy in so unpromising a subject for the exhibition of the finer emotions.
"Did the person who answered you ask you any question?" she said.
"No, mum," said Jim, relieved. Harriet said no more, she knew he had not made the false statement which had proved to be needless, and something assured her that there was no necessity that she should caution Jim to say nothing concerning this commission. Now she went away in reality--went home. She ascended the stairs to her room, and looked at her face in a glass as she took her bonnet off, and thought, "I wonder if people can see in my face that I am turning into a coward, and am going mad? I could not knock at that door and ask that simple, natural question for myself--I could not: and a little while ago, since--ay, long-since--I could have done anything. But not now--not now. When the time comes, when the waiting is over, when the suspense is ended, then I may be strong again, if indeed I am not quite mad by then; but now--now I cannot do anything--I cannot even wait."
The fixed look had left her face, and was succeeded by a painful wildness, and an expression almost like that of some present physical terror. She pressed her hands upon her temples and rocked herself to and fro, but there was no wild abandonment of grief in the gesture. Presently she began to moan, but all unconsciously; for catching the sound after a little, she checked it angrily. Then she took up some needlework, but it dropped from her hands after a few minutes. She started up, and said, quite aloud, "It's no use--it's no use; I must have rest!" Then she unlocked her dressing-case, took out a bottle of laudanum, poured some of the contents into a glass of water, drank the mixture, and lay down upon her bed. She was soon in a deep sleep which seemed peaceful and full of rest. It was undisturbed. A servant came into the room, but did not arouse her, and it was understood in the house that "master" would probably not return to dinner.
Mr. James Swain turned his steps in the direction of the delectable region in which his home was situated. He was in so far more fortunate than many of his class that he had a home, though a wretched one. It consisted of a dingy little room at the back of the third story in a rickety house in Strutton-ground, and was shared with a decrepit female, the elder sister of the boy's dead mother, who earned a frightfully insufficient subsistence by shoe-binding. More precarious than ever was this fragile means of living now, for her sight was failing, as her strength had failed. But things had been looking up with Jim of late, odd jobs had been plenty, his services had reached in certain quarters the status of recognized facts, and the street-boy was kind to his old relative. They were queer people, but not altogether uninteresting, and, strange to say, by no means unhappy. Old Sally had never been taught anything herself but shoe-binding, or she would have imparted instruction to Jim. Now Jim had learned to read in his mother's lifetime, and before his father had "come to grief" and been no more heard of, and it was consequently he who imparted instruction to his aunt. She was as fond of penny romances as the boy himself, and was wonderfully quick at discovering the impenetrable mysteries and unwinding the labyrinthine webs of those amazing productions. So Jim, cheered by the prospect of a lucrative job for the morrow, purchased a fresh and intensely horrible pennyworth by the way, and devoted himself for the evening to the delectation of old Sally, who liked her murders, as she liked her tea and her snuff, strongly flavoured.
The pennyworth lasted a good while, for Jim read slowly and elaborately, and conversational digressions occurred frequently. The heroine of the story, a proud and peerless peeress, was peculiarly fascinating to the reader and the listener.
"Lor, Jim," said old Sally, when the last line had been spelled over, and Jim was reluctantly obliged to confess that that was "all on it"--"lor, Jim, to think of that sweet pretty creetur, Rorer."--the angelic victim of the story was known to mortals as Aurora,--"knowing as how her ladyship 'ad been and done it all, and dyin' all alone in the moonshine, along o' thinkin' on her mother's villany."
Ordinarily, when Jim Swain lay down on his flock bed in the corner, he went to sleep with enviable rapidity; but the old woman's words had touched some chord of association or wonder in his clumsily arranged but not unintelligent mind; so that long after old Sally, in her corner of her little room, was sound asleep, Jim sat up hastily, ran his hands through his tangled hair, and said aloud:
"Good Lord! that's it! She's sure she knows it, she knows he did it, and she hidin' on it, and kiverin' of it up, and it's killing her."