The Flight of the Shadow

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He left us together. I quieted John by reading to him, and absolutely
declining to talk.

"You are a captive. The castle is enchanted: speak a single word," I
said, "and you will find yourself in the dungeon of your own room."

He looked at me an instant, closed his eyes, and in a few minutes was
fast asleep. He slept for two hours, and when he woke was quite himself.
He was very weak, but the fever was gone, and we had now only to feed him
up, and keep him quiet.

CHAPTER XXII.

JOHN RECALLS AND REMEMBERS.

What a weight was off my heart! It seemed as if nothing more could go
wrong. But, though John was plainly happy, he was not quite comfortable:
he worried himself with trying to remember how he had come to us. The
last thing he could definitely recall before finding himself with us, was
his mother looking at him through a night that seemed made of blackness
so solid that he marvelled she could move in it. She brought him
something to drink, but he fancied it blood, and would not touch it. He
remembered now that there was a red tumbler in his room. He could recall
nothing after, except a cold wind, and a sense of utter weariness but
absolute compulsion: he must keep on and on till he found the gate of
heaven, to which he seemed only for ever coming nearer. His conclusion
was, that he knew what he was about every individual moment, but had no
memory; each thing he did was immediately forgotten, while the knowledge
of what he had to do next remained with him. It was, he thought, a mental
condition analogous with walking, in which every step is a frustrated
fall. I set this down here, because, when I told my uncle what John had
been saying, myself not sure that I perceived what he meant, he declared
the boy a philosopher of the finest grain. But he warned me not to
encourage his talking, and especially not to ask him to explain. There
was nothing, he said, worse for a weak brain, than to set a strong will
to work it.

I tried to obey him, but it grew harder as the days went on. There were
not many of them, however; he recovered rapidly. When at length my uncle
talked not only to but with him, I regarded it as a virtual withdrawal of
his prohibition, and after that spoke to John of whatever came into his
or my head.

It was then he told me all he could remember since the moment he left me
with his supper in his hand. A great part of his recollection was the
vision of my uncle on the moor, and afterward in the park. We did not
know what to make of it. I should at once have concluded it caused by
prelusive illness, but for my remembrance of what both my uncle and
myself had seen, so long before, in the thunderstorm; while John, willing
enough to attribute its recurrence to that cause, found it impossible to
concede that he was anything but well when crossing the moor. I thought,
however, that excitement, fatigue, and lack of food, might have something
to do with it, and with his illness too; while, if he was in a state to
see anything phantasmal, what shape more likely to appear than that of my
uncle!

He would not hear of my mentioning the thing to my uncle. I would for my
own part have gone to him with it immediately; but could not with John's
prayer in my ears. I resolved, however, to gain his consent if I could.

He had by this time as great a respect for my uncle as I had myself, but
could not feel at home with him as I did. Whether the vision was only a
vision, or indeed my uncle's double, whatever a double may be, the tale
of it could hardly be an agreeable one to him; and naturally John shrank
from the risk of causing him the least annoyance.

The question of course came up, what he was to do when able to leave us.
He had spoken very plainly to my uncle concerning his relations with his
mother--had told him indeed that he could not help suspecting he owed his
illness to her.

I was nearly always present when they talked, but remember in especial a
part of what passed on one occasion.

"I believe I understand my mother," said John, "--but only after much
thinking. I loved her when a child; and if she had not left me for the
sake of liberty and influence--that at least is how I account for her
doing so--I might at this moment be struggling for personal freedom,
instead of having that over."

"There are women," returned my uncle, "some of them of the most admired,
who are slaves to a demoniacal love of power. The very pleasure of their
consciousness consists in the knowledge that they have power--not power
to do things, but power to make other people do things. It is an
insanity, but a devilishly immoral and hateful insanity.--I do not say
the lady in question is one of such, for I do not know her; I only say I
have known such a one."

John replied that certainly the love of power was his mother's special
weakness. She was spoiled when a child, he had been told; had her every
wish regarded, her every whim respected. This ruinous treatment sprang,
he said, from the self-same ambition, in another form, on the part of
her mother--the longing, namely, to secure her child's supreme
affection--with the natural consequence that they came to hate one
another. His father and she had been married but fifteen months, when he
died of a fall, following the hounds. Within six months she was engaged,
but the engagement was broken off, and she went abroad, leaving him
behind her. She married lord Cairnedge in Venice, and returned to England
when John was nearly four, and seemed to have lost all memory of her. His
stepfather was good to him, but died when he was about eight. His mother
was very severe. Her object plainly was to plant her authority so in his
very nature, that he should never think of disputing her will.

"But," said John, "she killed my love, and so I grew able to cast off her
yoke."

"The world would fare worse, I fancy," remarked my uncle, "if violent
women bore patient children. The evil would become irremediable. The
children might not be ruined, but they would bring no discipline to the
mother!"

"Her servants," continued John, "obey her implicitly, except when they
are sure she will never know. She treats them so imperiously, that they
admire her, and are proud to have such a mistress. But she is convinced
at last, I believe, that she will never get me to do as she pleases; and
therefore hates me so heartily, that she can hardly keep her ladylike
hands off me. I do not think I have been unreasonable; I have not found
it difficult to obey others that were set over me; but when I found
almost her every requirement part of a system for reducing me to a
slavish obedience, I began to lay down lines of my own. I resolved to do
at once whatever she asked me, whether pleasant to me or not, so long as
I saw no reason why it should not be done. Then I was surprised to find
how seldom I had to make a stand against her wishes. At the same time,
the mode in which she conveyed her pleasure, was invariably such as to
make a pretty strong effort of the will necessary for compliance with it.
But the effort to overcome the difficulty caused by her manner, helped to
develop in me the strength to resist where it was not right to yield. By
far the most serious difference we had yet had, arose about six months
ago, when she insisted I should make myself agreeable to a certain lady,
whom I by no means disliked. She had planned our marriage, I believe, as
one of her parallels in the siege of the lady's noble father, then a
widower of a year. I told her I would not lay myself out to please any
lady, except I wanted to marry her. 'And why, pray, should you not marry
her?' she returned. I answered that I did not love her, and would not
marry until I saw the woman I could not be happy without, and she
accepted me. She went into a terrible passion, but I found myself quite
unmoved by it: it is a wonderful heartener to know yourself not merely
standing up for a right, but for the right to do the right thing! 'You
wouldn't surely have me marry a woman I didn't care a straw for!' I said.
'Quench my soul!' she cried--I have often wondered where she learned the
oath--'what would that matter? She wouldn't care a straw for you in a
month!'--'Why should I marry her then?'--'Because your mother wishes it,'
she replied, and turned to march from the room as if that settled the
thing. But I could not leave it so. The sooner she understood the better!
'Mother!' I cried, 'I will not marry the lady. I will not pay her the
least attention that could be mistaken to mean the possibility of it.'
She turned upon me. I have just respect enough left for her, not to say
what her face suggested to me. She was pale as a corpse; her very lips
were colourless; her eyes--but I will not go on. 'Your father all over!'
she snarled--yes, snarled, with an inarticulate cry of fiercest loathing,
and turned again and went. If I do not quite think my mother, _at
present_, would murder me, I do think she would do anything short of
murder to gain her ends with me. But do not be afraid; I am sufficiently
afraid to be on my guard.

"My father was a rich man, and left my mother more than enough; there was
no occasion for her to marry again, except she loved, and I am sure she
did not love lord Cairnedge. I wish, for my sake, not for his, he were
alive now. But the moment, I am one and twenty, I shall be my own master,
and hope, sir, you will not count me unworthy to be the more Belorba's
servant. One thing I am determined upon: my mother shall not cross my
threshold but at my wife's invitation; and I shall never ask my wife to
invite her. She is too dangerous.

"We had another altercation about Miss Miles, an hour or two before I
first saw Orba. They were far from worthy feelings that possessed me up
to the moment when I caught sight of her over the wall. It was a leap out
of hell into paradise. The glimpse of such a face, without shadow of
scheme or plan or selfish end, was salvation to me. I thank God!"

Perhaps I ought not to let those words about myself stand, but he said
them.

He had talked too long. He fell back in his chair, and the tears began to
gather in his eyes. My uncle rose, put his arm about me, and led me to
the study.

"Let him rest a bit, little one," he said as we entered. "It is long
since we had a good talk!"

He seated himself in his think-chair--a name which, when a child, I had
given it, and I slid to the floor at his feet.

"I cannot help thinking, little one," he began, "that you are going to be
a happy woman! I do believe that is a man to be trusted. As for the
mother, there is no occasion to think of her, beyond being on your guard
against her. You will have no trouble with her after you are married."

"I cannot help fearing she will do us a mischief, uncle," I returned.

"Sir Philip Sidney says--'Since a man is bound no further to himself than
to do wisely, chance is only to trouble them that stand upon chance.'
That is, we are responsible only for our actions, not for their results.
Trust first in God, then in John Day."

"I was sure you would like him, uncle!" I cried, with a flutter of loving
triumph.

"I was nearly as sure myself--such confidence had I in the instinct of my
little one. I think that I, of the two of us, may, in this instance,
claim the greater faith!"

"You are always before me, uncle!" I said. "I only follow where you lead.
But what do you think the woman will do next?"

"I don't think. It is no use. We shall hear of her before long. If all
mothers were like her, the world would hardly be saved!"

"It would not be worth saving, uncle."

"Whatever can be saved, must be worth saving, my child."

"Yes, uncle; I shouldn't have said that," I replied.

CHAPTER XXIII.

LETTER AND ANSWER.

We did hear of her before long. The next morning a letter was handed to
my uncle as we sat at breakfast. He looked hard at the address, changed
countenance, and frowned very dark, but I could not read the frown. Then
his face cleared a little; he opened, read, and handed the letter to me.

Lady Cairnedge hoped Mr. Whichcote would excuse one who had so lately
come to the neighbourhood, that, until an hour ago, she knew nothing of
the position and character of the gentleman in whose house her son had,
in a momentary, but, alas! not unusual aberration, sought shelter, and
found generous hospitality. She apologized heartily for the unceremonious
way in which she had sent for him. In her anxiety to have him home, if
possible, before he should realize his awkward position in the house of a
stranger, she had been inconsiderate! She left it to the judgment of his
kind host whether she should herself come to fetch him, or send her
carriage with the medical man who usually attended him. In either case
her servants must accompany the carriage, as he would probably object to
being removed. He might, however, be perfectly manageable, for he was,
when himself, the gentlest creature in the world!

I was in a rage. I looked up, expecting to see my uncle as indignant with
the diabolical woman as I was myself. But he seemed sunk in reverie, his
body present, his spirit far away. A pang shot through my heart. Could
the wicked device have told already?

"May I ask, uncle," I said, and tried hard to keep my voice steady, "how
you mean to answer this vile epistle?"

He looked up with a wan smile, such as might have broke from Lazarus when
he found himself again in his body.

"I will take it to the young man," he answered.

"Please, let us go at once then, uncle! I cannot sit still."

He rose, and we went together to John's room.

He was much better--sitting up in bed, and eating the breakfast Penny had
carried him.

"I have just had a letter from your mother, Day," said my uncle.

"Indeed!" returned John dryly.

"Will you read it, and tell me what answer you would like me to return."

"Hardly like her usual writing--though there's her own strange S!"
remarked John as he looked at it.

"Does she always make an S like that?" asked my uncle, with something
peculiar in his tone, I thought.

"Always--like a snake just going to strike."

My uncle's face grew ghastly pale. He almost snatched the letter from
John's hand, looked at it, gave it back to him, and, to our dismay, left
the room.

"What can be the matter, John?" I said, my heart sinking within me.

"Go to him," said John.

I dared not. I had often seen him _like_ that before walking out into the
night; but there was something in his face now which I had not seen there
before. It looked as if some terrible suspicion were suddenly confirmed.

"You see what my mother is after!" said John. "You have now to believe
_her_, that I am subject to fits of insanity, or to believe _me_, that
there is nothing she will not do to get her way."

"Her object is clear," I replied. "But if she thinks to fool my uncle,
she will find herself mistaken!"

"She hopes to fool both you and your uncle," he rejoined. "The only wise
thing I could do, she will handle so as to convince any expert of my
madness--I mean, my coming to you! My reasons will go for nothing--less
than no-thing--with any one she chooses to bewitch. She will look at me
with an anxious love no doctor could doubt. No one can know _you_ do not
know that I am not mad--or at least subject to attacks of madness!"

"Oh, John, don't frighten me!" I cried.

"There! you are not sure about it!"

It seemed cruel of him to tease me so; but I saw presently why he did it:
he thought his mother's letter had waked a doubt in my uncle; and he
wanted me not to be vexed with my uncle, even if he deserted him and went
over to his mother's side.

"I love your uncle," he said. "I know he is a true man! I _will_ not be
angry with him if my mother do mislead him. The time will come when he
will know the truth. It must appear at last! I shall have to fight her
alone, that's all! The worst is, if he thinks with my mother I shall have
to go at once!--If only somebody would sell my horse for me!"

I guessed that his mother kept him short of money, and remembered with
gladness that I was not quite penniless at the moment.

"In the meantime, you must keep as quiet as you can, John," I said.
"Where is the good of planning upon an _if_? To trust is to get ready,
uncle says. Trust is better than foresight."

John required little such persuading. And indeed something very different
was in my uncle's mind from what John feared.

Presently I caught a glimpse of him riding out of the yard. I ran to a
window from which I could see the edge of the moor, and saw him cross it
at an uphill gallop.

He was gone about four hours, and on his return went straight to his own
room. Not until nine o'clock did I go to him, and then he came with me to
supper.

He looked worn, but was kind and genial as usual. After supper he sent
for Dick, and told him to ride to Rising, the first thing in the morning,
with a letter he would find on the hall-table.

The letter he read to us before we parted for the night. It was all we
could have wished. He wrote that he must not have any one in his house
interfered with; so long as a man was his guest, he was his servant. Her
ladyship had, however, a perfect right to see her son, and would be
welcome; only the decision as to his going or remaining must rest with
the young man himself. If he chose to accompany his mother, well and
good! though he should be sorry to lose him. If he declined to return
with her, he and his house continued at his service.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HAND TO HAND.

We looked for lady Cairnedge all the next day. John was up by noon, and
ready to receive her in the drawing-room; he would not see her in his
bedroom. But the hours passed, and she did not come.

In the evening, however, when the twilight was thickening, and already
all was dark in the alleys of the garden, her carriage drove quietly
up--with a startling scramble of arrest at the door. The same servants
were outside, and a very handsome dame within. As she descended, I saw
that she was tall, and, if rather stout, not stouter than suited her age
and style. Her face was pale, but she seemed in perfect health. When I
saw her closer, I found her features the most regular I had ever seen.
Had the soul within it filled the mould of that face, it would have been
beautiful. As it was, it was only handsome--to me repulsive. The moment I
saw it, I knew myself in the presence of a masked battery.

My uncle had insisted that she should be received where we usually sat,
and had given Penny orders to show her into the hall-kitchen.

I was alone there, preparing something for John. We were not expecting
her, for it seemed now too late to look for her. My uncle was in the
study, and Martha somewhere about the house. My heart sank as I turned
from the window, and sank yet lower when she appeared in the doorway of
the kitchen. But as I advanced, I caught sight of my uncle, and went
boldly to meet the enemy. He had come down his stair, and had just
stepped into a clear blaze of light, which that moment burst from the
wood I had some time ago laid damp upon the fire. The next instant I saw
the lady's countenance ghastly with terror, looking beyond me. I turned,
but saw nothing, save that my uncle had disappeared. When I faced her
again, only a shadow of her fright remained. I offered her my hand--for
she was John's mother, but she did not take it. She stood scanning me
from head to foot.

"I am lady Cairnedge," she said. "Where is my son?"

I turned yet again. My uncle had not come back. I was not prepared to
take his part. I was bewildered. A dead silence fell. For the first time
in my life, my uncle seemed to have deserted me, and at the moment when
most I needed him! I turned once more to the lady, and said, hardly
knowing what,

"You wish to see Mr. Day?"

She answered me with a cold stare.

"I will go and tell him you are here," I faltered; and passing her, I
sped along the passage to the drawing-room.

"John!" I cried, bursting in, "she's come! Do you still mean to see her?
Are you able? Uncle--"

There I stopped, for his eyes were stern, and not looking at me, but at
something behind me. One moment I thought his fever had returned, but
following his gaze I looked round:--there stood lady Cairnedge! John was
face to face with his mother, and my uncle was not there to defend him!

"Are you ready?" she said, nor pretended greeting. She seemed slightly
discomposed, and in haste.

I was by this time well aware of my lover's determination of character,
but I was not prepared for the tone in which he addressed the icy woman
calling herself his mother.

"I am ready to listen," he answered.

"John!" she returned, with mingled severity and sharpness, "let us have
no masquerading! You are perfectly fit to come home, and you must come at
once. The carriage is at the door."

"You are quite right, mother," answered John calmly; "I _am_ fit to go
home with you. But Rising does not quite agree with me. I dread such
another attack, and do not mean to go."

The drawing-room had a rectangular bay-window, one of whose three sides
commanded the door. The opposite side looked into a little grove of
larches. Lady Cairnedge had already realized the position of the room.
She darted to the window, and saw her carriage but a few yards away.

She would have thrown up the sash, but found she could not. She twisted
her handkerchief round her gloved hand, and dashed it through a pane.

"Men!" she cried, in a loud, commanding voice, "come at once."

The moment she went to the window, I sprang to the door, locked it, put
the key in my pocket, and set my back to the door.

I heard the men thundering at the hall-door. Lady Cairnedge turned as if
she would herself go and open to them, but seeing me, she understood what
I had done, and went back to the window.

"Come here! Come to me here--to the window!" she cried.

John had been watching with a calm, determined look. He came and stood
between us.

"John," I said, "leave your mother to me."

"She will kill you!" he answered.

"You might kill her!" I replied.

I darted to the chimney, where a clear fire was burning, caught up the
poker, and thrust it between the bars.

"That's for you!" I whispered. "They will not touch you with that in your
hand! Never mind me. If your mother move hand or foot to help them, it
will be my turn!"

He gave me a smile and a nod, and his eyes lightened. I saw that he
trusted me, and I felt fearless as a bull-dog.

In the meantime, she had spoken to her servants, and was now trying to
open the window, which had a peculiar catch. I saw that John could defend
himself much better at the window than in the room. I went softly behind
his mother, put my hands round her neck, and clasping them in front,
pulled her backward with all my strength. We fell on the floor together,
I under of course, but clutching as if all my soul were in my fingers.
Neither should she meddle with John, nor should he lay hand on her! I did
not mind much what I did to her myself.

"To the window, John," I cried, "and break their heads!"

He snatched the poker from the fire, and the next moment I heard a
crashing of glass, but of course I could not see what was going on. Mine
was no grand way of fighting, but what was dignity where John was in
danger! For the moment I had the advantage, but, while determined to hold
on to the last, I feared she would get the better of me, for she was much
bigger and stronger, and crushed and kicked, and dug her elbows into me,
struggling like a mad woman.

All at once the tug of her hands on mine ceased. She gave a great shriek,
and I felt a shudder go through her. Then she lay still. I relaxed my
hold cautiously, for I feared a trick. She did not move. Horror seized
me; I thought I had killed her. I writhed from under her to see. As I did
so, I caught sight of the pale face of my uncle, looking in at that part
of the window next the larch-grove. Immediately I remembered lady
Cairnedge's terror in the kitchen, and knew that the cause of it, and of
her present cry, must be the same, to wit, the sight of my uncle. I had
not hurt her! I was not yet on my feet when my uncle left the window,
flew to the other side of it, and fell upon the men with a stick so
furiously that he drove them to the carriage. The horses took fright, and
went prancing about, rearing and jibbing. At the call of the coachman,
two of the men flew to their heads. I saw no more of their assailant.

John, who had not got a fair blow at one of his besiegers, left the
window, and came to me where I was trying to restore his mother. The
third man, the butler, came back to the window, put his hand through,
undid the catch, and flung the sash wide. John caught up the poker from
the floor, and darted to it.

"Set foot within the window, Parker," he cried, "and I will break your
head."

The man did not believe he would hurt him, and put foot and head through
the window.

Now John had honestly threatened, but to perform he found harder than he
had thought: it is one thing to raise a poker, and another to strike a
head with it. The window was narrow, and the whole man was not yet in the
room, when John raised his weapon; but he could not bring the horrid
poker down upon the dumb blind back of the stooping man's head. He threw
it from him, and casting his eyes about, spied a huge family-bible on a
side-table. He sprang to it, and caught it up--just in time. The man had
got one foot firm on the floor, and was slowly drawing in the other, when
down came the bible on his head, with all the force John could add to its
weight. The butler tumbled senseless on the floor.

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