Summer and winter came and went, and were followed by a gloomy and dismal spring. The late-lying snow was dissolved by heavy rains so that the mill stream was swollen beyond precedent, and rolled thundering through the gorge with the force of a full-grown cataract. But the mill was idle, and the wheel stood still. None came for flour now, nor to bring grist; for many a week all work had been foregone.
Yet the house was not deserted. An elderly woman, with a forbidding face that had once been handsome, moved to and fro behind the windows; and a man, bent and feeble, with strangely-grizzled hair, sat motionless for hours at a time in his study-chair. Sometimes, in his loneliness, he would set his teeth edge to edge, and clench his thin hands desperately, and utter an inarticulate sound of menace. But at a certain hour of the evening he would arise and walk with noiseless steps to the door of a darkened chamber. There he would pause and lean and listen. Presently from within would be heard the shrill, petulant crying of an infant, and anon the voice of its young mother, sad and tender, soothing and pathetic: “Baby, baby, don’t cry; hush, hush, hush! father will come to us soon; he will come, he will come! he loves us and will never leave us; hush, hush, hush!”
At these sounds the pallid visage of the man would quiver and darken, and he would press his clenched hands upon his breast. Returning at length to his study, he got upon his knees and stretched his arms upwards.
“God—God of evil or of good, whichever you are—give my enemy into my power! Let my curse work upon him till it destroy him: let my eyes see him perish! He has robbed me of my love, and my hope, and my salvation; he has defiled and dishonoured that which was mine; he has made my life a desert and an abomination! Yet I would live, and suffer all this and more, if he might perish by my curse, body and soul, for ever! Grant me this, God or Devil, and after do with me what you will!”
Such was his prayer. But he never entered the darkened chamber where the child and its young mother lay; he never looked upon them or spoke to them, nor did his heart forgive them. He could not forgive till he had had revenge. Since that hour in which he had first learnt the truth, and with hysteric fury had sprung at the seducer’s throat, his soul had been empoisoned against them and all the world. He was possessed by that devil to which he prayed, and good was evil to him.
One day he was standing in a kind of stupor at his window staring out at the black mill-wheel, which was now the only object in the world with which he felt himself in sympathy. There came a knock at the door, and Jael, the housekeeper, entered. Since the calamity which had befallen, her manner towards Gloam had undergone a change. She had before exercised a kind of authority over him, such as a compact and unsympathetic nature easily acquires over one of wider culture but more sensitive than itself. But Gloam had become more terrible in his desolation than a less naturally gentle man would have been; and Jael feared him. She felt that he might murder her; and minded her steps, lest in some sudden paroxysm he should leap out upon her.
She advanced a little way into the room, and stopped. He did not turn, or show that he was aware of her presence. After a few moments she said:
“Master, he is coming back; David’s coming home again, sir. He’s going to make it all right with Swanhilda—he means to marry her!”
Gloam did not stir; but as Jael watched him narrowly, she fancied that his limbs and body slowly stiffened, until they became quite rigid; only his head had a slight shivering motion. The woman shrank back a step, with a feeling of alarm.