There was a pause, during which Adam stood stunned, feeling that everything was crumbling and giving way beneath him—that he had no longer anything to live for, anything to hope, anything to fear. As, one after another, each former bare suggestion of artifice now passed before him clothed in the raiment of certain deceit, he made a desperate clutch at the most improbable, in the wild hope that one falsehood at least might afford him some ray of light, however feeble, to dispel the horrors of this terrible darkness.
"And after she'd got the letter," he said, "what—what about the rest?"
"Why 'twas this way," cried Jonathan, his eyes rekindling in his eagerness to tell the story: "somebody dropped a bit of paper into the rendevoos winder, with writin' 'pon it to say when and where they'd find the Lottery to. Who 'twas did it none knaws for sartain, but the talk's got abroad 'twas a sergeant there, 'cos he'd a bin braggin' aforehand that he'd got a watch-sale and that o' her'n'."
"Her'n?" echoed Adam.
"Iss, o' Eve's. And he's allays a-showin' of it off, he is; and when they axes un questions he doan't answer, but he dangles the sale afront of 'em and says, 'What d'ee think?' he says; and now he makes his brag that he shall hab the maid yet, while her man's a-dancin' gallus-high a top o' Tyburn tree."
The blood rushed up into Adam's face, so that each vein stood a separate cord of swollen, bursting rage.
"They wasn't a-manin' you, ye knaw," said Jonathan: "'twar Jerrem. Her's played un false, I reckon. Awh!" and he gave a fiendish chuckle, "but us'll pay her out for't, woan't us, eh? Awnly you give to me the ticklin' o' her ozel-pipe;" and he made a movement of his bony fingers that conveyed such a hideous embodiment of his meaning that Adam, overcome by horror, threw up his arms with a terrible cry to heaven, and falling prone he let the bitterness of death pass over the love that had so late lain warm at his heart; while Jonathan crouched down, trembling and awestricken by the sight of emotion which, though he could not comprehend nor account for, stirred in him the sympathetic uneasiness of a dumb animal. Afraid to move or speak, he remained watching Adam's bent figure until his shallow brain, incapable of any sustained concentration of thought, wandered off to other interests, from which he was recalled by a noise, and looking up he saw that Adam had raised himself and was wiping his face with his handkerchief. Did he feel so hot, then? No, it must be that he felt cold, for he shivered and his teeth seemed to chatter as he told Jonathan to stoop down by the side there and hand him up a jar and a glass that he would find; and this got, Adam poured out some of its contents, and after tossing it off told Jonathan to take the jar and help himself, for, as nothing could be done until daylight, they might as well lie down and try and get some sleep. Jonathan's relish for spirit once excited, he made himself tolerably free of the permission, and before long had helped himself to such purpose that, stretched in a heavy sleep, unless some one roused him he was not likely to awake for some hours to come.
Then Adam got up and with cautious movements stole down the ladder, undid the small hatch-door which opened out on the mill-stream, fastened it after him, and leaping across stood for a few moments asking himself what he had come out to do. He didn't know, for as yet, in the tumult of jealousy and revenge, there was no outlet, no gap, by which he might drain off any portion of that passionate fire which was rapidly destroying and consuming all his softer feelings. The story which Jonathan had brought of the betrayal to the sergeant, the fellow's boastings and his possession of the seal Adam treated as an idle tale, its possibility vanquished by his conviction that Eve could have had no share in it. It was the letter from Jerrem which was the damnatory proof in Adam's eyes—the proof by which he judged and condemned her; for had not he himself seen and wondered at Jerrem's anxiety to go to Guernsey, his elation at finding a letter waiting him, his display of wishing to be seen secretly reading it, and now his ultimate betrayal of them by sending an answer to it?
As for Jerrem—oh he would deal with him as with a dog, and quickly send him to that fate he so richly deserved. It was not against Jerrem that the depths of his bitterness welled over: as the strength of his love, so ran his hate; and this all turned to one direction, and that direction pointed toward Eve.
He must see her, stand face to face with her, smite her with reproaches, heap upon her curses, show her how he could trample on her love and fling her back her perjured vows. And then? This done, what was there left? From Jerrem he could free himself. A word, a blow, and all would be over: but how with her? True, he could kill the visible Eve with his own hands, but the Eve who lived in his love, would she not live there still? Ay; and though he flung that body which could court the gaze of other eyes than his full fathoms deep, the fair image which dwelt before him would remain present to his vision. So that, do what he would, Eve would live, must live. Live! Crushing down on that thought came the terrible consequences which might come of Jonathan's tale being told—a tale so colored with all their bitterest prejudices that it was certain to be greedily listened to; and in the storm of angry passion it would rouse everything else would be swallowed up by resentment against Eve's baseness; and the fire once kindled, what would come of it?