CHAPTER XIII

RACHAEL

A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had

often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in

this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen

added to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the

casualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so

unequal a hand as Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing to it.

For, say that the child of a King and the child of a Weaver were born

to-night in the same moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any

human creature who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this

abandoned woman lived on!

From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with

suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door,

opened it, and so into the room.

Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.

She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight

of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is

to say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be

she; but Rachael’s hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened

from his eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of

Rachael’s were in the room. Everything was in its place and order as he

had always kept it, the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was

freshly swept. It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael’s

face, and looked at nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut

out from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not

before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes

were filled too.

She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was

quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.

‘I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late.’

‘I ha’ been walking up an’ down.’

‘I thought so. But ’tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very

heavy, and the wind has risen.’

The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the

chimney, and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not

to have known it was blowing!

‘I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady came round for

me at dinner-time. There was some one here that needed looking to, she

said. And ‘deed she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen.

Wounded too, and bruised.’

He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.

‘I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked

with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married

her when I was her friend—’

He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.

‘And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that

’tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want

of aid. Thou knowest who said, “Let him who is without sin among you

cast the first stone at her!” There have been plenty to do that. Thou

art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so

low.’

‘O Rachael, Rachael!’

‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in

compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and

mind.’

[Picture: Stephen and Rachael in the sick room]

The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the

self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She

steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid

from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The

three-legged table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there

were two bottles. This was one.

It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his

eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters. He turned of a

deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.

‘I will stay here, Stephen,’ said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat,

‘till the bells go Three. ’Tis to be done again at three, and then she

may be left till morning.’

‘But thy rest agen to-morrow’s work, my dear.’

‘I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it.

’Tis thou who art in need of rest—so white and tired. Try to sleep in

the chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can

well believe. To-morrow’s work is far harder for thee than for me.’

He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as

if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had

cast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from

himself.

‘She don’t know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I

have spoken to her times and again, but she don’t notice! ’Tis as well

so. When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I

can, and she never the wiser.’

‘How long, Rachael, is ’t looked for, that she’ll be so?’

‘Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.’

His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing

him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it was not that. He had had a fright.’

‘A fright?’

‘Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When

I—’ It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf,

as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it

were palsied.

‘Stephen!’

She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.

‘No! Don’t, please; don’t. Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me

see thee, a’ so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I see thee

when I coom in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never,

never!’

He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a

time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and

his head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael. Seen across the dim

candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining

round her head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as

the noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went

about the house clamouring and lamenting.

‘When she gets better, Stephen, ’tis to be hoped she’ll leave thee to

thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now.

And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.’

He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but,

by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased

to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the

voices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said.

Even this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a

long, troubled dream.

He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set—but

she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his

imaginary happiness—stood in the church being married. While the

ceremony was performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some

whom he knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness

came on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from

one line in the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the

building with the words. They were sounded through the church, too, as

if there were voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the whole

appearance before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it

had been, but himself and the clergyman. They stood in the daylight

before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have

been brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he

thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one

pitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his

face. He stood on a raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at

the shape the loom took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read,

he knew that he was there to suffer death. In an instant what he stood

on fell below him, and he was gone.

—Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that

he knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by

some means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in

this world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to

look on Rachael’s face or hear her voice. Wandering to and fro,

unceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only

knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject of a nameless,

horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape which everything

took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The

object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any

one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led

them out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where

it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be

secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of the

mills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.

The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and

the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four

walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes

had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the

chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The

table stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its

real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated.

He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it

moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the

curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and

sat up.

With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked

all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair.

Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a

shade, while she looked into it. Again they went all round the room,

scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He

thought, as she once more shaded them—not so much looking at him, as

looking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there—that no single

trace was left in those debauched features, or in the mind that went

along with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before. But

that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed

her to be the same.

All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and

powerless, except to watch her.

Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she

sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting

on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now,

for the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.

Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of

last night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her

greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while

considering which of the two bottles she should choose. Finally, she

laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death

in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.

Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be

real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!

She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very

cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A

moment and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come

about her with its utmost power. But in that moment Rachael started up

with a suppressed cry. The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by

the hair; but Rachael had the cup.

Stephen broke out of his chair. ‘Rachael, am I wakin’ or dreamin’ this

dreadfo’ night?’

‘’Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep, myself. ’Tis near three.

Hush! I hear the bells.’

The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They

listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she

was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her

forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been

awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.

‘I thought it must be near three,’ she said, calmly pouring from the cup

into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. ‘I am thankful I

stayed! ’Tis done now, when I have put this on. There! And now she’s

quiet again. The few drops in the basin I’ll pour away, for ’tis bad

stuff to leave about, though ever so little of it.’ As she spoke, she

drained the basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the

hearth.

She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before

going out into the wind and rain.

‘Thou’lt let me walk wi’ thee at this hour, Rachael?’

‘No, Stephen. ’Tis but a minute, and I’m home.’

‘Thou’rt not fearfo’;’ he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the

door; ‘to leave me alone wi’ her!’

As she looked at him, saying, ‘Stephen?’ he went down on his knee before

her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.

‘Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!’

‘I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not

like me. Between them, and a working woman fu’ of faults, there is a

deep gulf set. My little sister is among them, but she is changed.’

She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they

fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.

‘Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wishfo’ to be

more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee when this life is ower, and a’

the muddle cleared awa’. Thou’rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my

soul alive!’

She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his

hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of

his face.

‘I coom home desp’rate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and mad wi’ thinking

that when I said a word o’ complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand.

I told thee I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I

never hurt a livin’ creetur; but happenin’ so suddenly upon ’t, I thowt,

“How can _I_ say what I might ha’ done to myseln, or her, or both!”’

She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him

from saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding

them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:

‘But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha’ seen thee, aw this

night. In my troublous sleep I ha’ known thee still to be there.

Evermore I will see thee there. I nevermore will see her or think o’

her, but thou shalt be beside her. I nevermore will see or think o’

anything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by

th’ side on’t. And so I will try t’ look t’ th’ time, and so I will try

t’ trust t’ th’ time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far

awa’, beyond the deep gulf, in th’ country where thy little sister is.’

He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him

good night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.

The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still

blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent

itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood

bare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the

shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in

the rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.