CHAPTER XXXVIII
ADA
Ada had gone home, after leaving the Dower House. The maid had told Michael that Miss Dixon had gone out about eight o’clock, in her bonnet and shawl, without any breakfast, and that she had had nothing to eat after her arrival at home. She had never, indeed, taken her things off; but was in exactly the same dress she had worn on her journey to Bradstane, which had been a long and fatiguing one. On going home from her interview with Eleanor, she went upstairs, partly in mechanical obedience to a remembered mandate of Miss Askam’s, partly automatically.
She never undressed, or even lay down on her bed. Part of the cruel night she spent in sitting on a chair by the wall, staring with blank eyes into the darkness, and repressing, half mechanically, the moans that rose to her lips. Another portion of her vigil was consumed in a restless wandering to and fro. Her chamber was over the empty parlour. No one would hear or heed her footsteps. At last, finding the darkness unbearable, she struck a match, and lighted two candles which stood on the dressing-table, and gazed about the room. It was her own bedroom that she was in, and the bed, beside which she sat, was the bed in which Ada Dixon had slept—the same Ada Dixon who had felt indignant and insulted when her plain-spoken lover had told her that no honest girl required notice from her superiors. How very angry she had been when he said it. At this recollection she held her hands before her mouth to stifle a shriek. In this room, before that looking-glass, how many hours had she spent, trying the effect of this, that, or the other piece of finery; endeavouring to model her bonnets, her hats, her mantles, and her gowns upon those of her patroness, Magdalen Wynter? In that desk, standing upon the little round table in the corner, how many notes might be reposing, indited by Otho Askam? Notes slipped into her hand under Magdalen’s very eyes, when he had met her at Balder Hall; behind her unsuspecting father’s back, when she happened to be in the shop. Notes containing at first nothing but a rather heavy style of compliment, adapted to a taste not over-fastidious in such matters; tragic effusions, when read by the light of this present; ponderously comic, if viewed critically on their intrinsic merits as compositions.
When had it first seriously occurred to her that she might become Mrs. Askam, of Thorsgarth? Why, on that night, a hundred years ago, when there had been a grand concert, at which she had sung—when Miss Wynter had been flouted, and Ada flattered and complimented.
That was the night Roger had come in in such a fury, and carried her away. Roger—Roger—her thoughts wandered—who was Roger, and what had he to do with her? They were engaged to be married once—now—yet——Yes, and in November he was to come and see her.
Again a scream of wild laughter rose to her lips. Again she managed to stifle it, and again her mind reverted, whether she would or no, to her horror, her nightmare, the history of the last seven months. She recollected how Otho had appeared one day at the farmhouse where she was staying, and had paid her compliments; how she, grown bolder now that Magdalen was not present to overawe her, had, in a perkish manner, chaffed him about his engagement; to which he had retorted that he was not married yet, and that engagements might be broken off; and had appealed to her admiring cousins to know if Miss Dixon would not grace any sphere, even the most exalted. She remembered the gradually arising passion in his looks and his words, and how she herself, by one of those mysterious attractions which we see daily exemplified, had found herself spellbound by him in a manner which Roger could never have compassed if he had died for it. Temptation, kisses, promises—such profuse promises, appealing with instinctive acuteness to her vanity, her love of distinction—the strange eyes which magnetised and fascinated her; a brief, delirious dream—and since then, hell, by day and by night; not from the sense of defilement which would kill some natures—but, let the truth be written of her; she has her compeers in many places—from the scorching conviction that if, or when, she was found out, disgrace and contumely would be her portion.
She recalled the parting from Roger—when she had dismissed him in the pride of her heart, at a time when hope was still strong; and though she was beginning to have sickening qualms, yet she had been deluded enough to mistake his footstep behind her for Otho’s, and had had a wild idea that he had at last broken with Magdalen, and was coming to save and to claim her. Then her departure; the letters she had written, which had never been noticed; her aunt’s gradually awakened suspicions, and the tales she had told to stave off ruin and discovery; her journey home in fluttering hope, and desperate resolve; for a letter from home in which her father had expressed himself obscurely, had made her think Otho was at Thorsgarth. How she had made inquiries, and learnt that he had been gone a month or more. Then Eleanor, and her promises, and how she was to go and see her in the morning.
The night hours passed swiftly in this consuming vigil, and presently Ada saw that it was broad day, time, therefore, to go and see Miss Askam. That was her one thought now, that she was to go and see Miss Askam. And yet, her mind being more than a little wandering, she did not realise that though daylight, it was not yet the appointed time; but went downstairs, and let herself out of the house. The maid was at work in the kitchen; but she was a new-comer since Ada had left home, and did not therefore address her, or ask her any questions.
When Ada was out in the street she felt very weak and very strange, but she looked at a clock which stood over a public building, nearly opposite her father’s house. The hands pointed to eight; and then she remembered vaguely that Miss Askam had said nine; she must not go before nine.
She would take a little walk then, in the early freshness; she could not go back to that dreadful room. Besides, she had advanced a little up the town, into the square: there were Miss Askam’s blinds still down; it would not do to go there yet, though she longed to do so, and, had she been in her right mind, would have knocked without further ado, confident in the generous charity of the other woman.