But the intruder was not calm. On the contrary, she was struggling with intense excitement, panting, trembling, compelled to stop on her way across the room to put her hand to her side, and gasp for the half-stifled breath. She took no notice of the young people who stood by. It is doubtful even whether she was aware of their presence. She went up gasping to the man she thought her enemy. “I am in time,” she said. “I have come to claim my mother’s money—the money you have robbed us of. I am in time—I know I am just in time! I have been at Doctors’ Commons; it’s no use telling me lies. I know every thing. I’ve come for my mother’s money—the money you’ve robbed from me and mine!”
Jack came forward bewildered by these extraordinary words. “This is frenzy,” he said. “The Rector is right. She must be mad. Mrs. Preston, come and I’ll take you home. Don’t let us make any row about it. She is Pamela’s mother. Let me take her quietly away.”
“I might be mad,” said the strange apparition, “if wrong could make a woman mad. Don’t talk to me of Pamela. Sir, you understand it’s you I come to—it’s you! Give me my mother’s money! I’ll not go away from here till I have justice. I’ll have you taken up for a robber! I’ll have you put in prison! It’s justice I want—and my rights.”
“Be quiet, Jack,” said Mr. Brownlow; “let her alone. Go away—that is the best service you can do me. Mrs. Preston, you must explain yourself. Who was your mother, and what do you want with me?”
Then she made a rush forward to him and clutched his arm. He was standing in his former position leaning against the mantle-piece, firm, upright, pale, a strong man still, and with his energies unbroken. She rushed at him, a tottering, agitated woman, old and weak and half-frantic with excitement. “Give me my mother’s money!” she cried, and gasped and choked, her passion being too much for her. At this instant the clock struck: it was a silvery, soft-tongued clock, and made the slow beats of time thrill into the silence. Mr. Brownlow laughed when he heard it—laughed not with triumph, but with that sense of the utter futility of all calculations which sometimes comes upon the mind with a strange sense of the humor of it, at the most terrible crisis. Let it strike—what did it matter?—nothing now could deliver him from his fate.
“I take you to witness I was here and claimed my money before it struck,” cried the woman. “I was here. You can’t change that. You villain give me my mother’s money! Give me my money: you’ve had it for five-and-twenty years!”
“Compose yourself,” said Mr. Brownlow, speaking to her as he might have done had he been the professional adviser of the man who was involved; “sit down and take your time; you were here before twelve, you shall have all the benefit of that; now tell me what your name is, and what is your claim.”
Mrs. Preston sat down as he told her, and glared at him with her wild bright eyes; but notwithstanding the overwrought condition in which she was, she could not but recognize the calm of the voice which addressed her: a certain shade of uncertainty flickered over her countenance—she grew confused in the midst of her assurance—it seemed impossible that he could take it so quietly if he knew what she meant. And then her bodily fatigue, sleeplessness, and exhaustion were beginning to tell.
“You are trying to cheat me,” she said, with difficulty restraining the impulse of her weakness to cry. “You are trying to cheat me! you know it better than I do, and I read it with my own eyes: you have had it for five-and-twenty years: and you try to face it out and cheat me now!”
Then the outburst came which had been kept back so long; she had eaten nothing all day; she had not slept the previous night; she had been traveling and rushing about till the solid earth seemed to be going round and round with her; she burst into sobbing and crying as she spoke; not tears—she was not capable of tears. When Mr. Brownlow, in his extraordinary self-possession, went to a side-table to bring a decanter of sherry which had been placed there, she made an effort to rise to stop him, but even that she was unable to do. He walked across the room while his astonished children still stood and looked on. He alone had all his wits about him, and sense enough to be compassionate. He filled out a glass of wine with a steady hand and brought it to her. “Take this,” he said, “and then you will be more able to tell me what you mean.”