The Complete Works. George Eliot

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      Chapter XIX.

      Table of Contents

      The sad slow week was gone by at last. At the coroner’s inquest a verdict of sudden death had been pronounced. Dr Hart, acquainted with Captain Wybrow’s previous state of health, had given his opinion that death had been imminent from long-established disease of the heart, though it had probably been accelerated by some unusual emotion. Miss Assher was the only person who positively knew the motive that had led Captain Wybrow to the Rookery; but she had not mentioned Caterina’s name, and all painful details or inquiries were studiously kept from her. Mr. Gilfil and Sir Christopher, however, knew enough to conjecture that the fatal agitation was due to an appointed meeting with Caterina.

      All search and inquiry after her had been fruitless, and were the more likely to be so because they were carried on under the prepossession that she had committed suicide. No one noticed the absence of the trifles she had taken from her desk; no one knew of the likeness, or that she had hoarded her seven-shilling pieces, and it was not remarkable that she should have happened to be wearing the pearl earrings. She had left the house, they thought, taking nothing with her; it seemed impossible she could have gone far; and she must have been in a state of mental excitement, that made it too probable she had only gone to seek relief in death. The same places within three or four miles of the Manor were searched again and again—every pond, every ditch in the neighbourhood was examined.

      Sometimes Maynard thought that death might have come on unsought, from cold and exhaustion; and not a day passed but he wandered through the neighbouring woods, turning up the heaps of dead leaves, as if it were possible her dear body could be hidden there. Then another horrible thought recurred, and before each night came he had been again through all the uninhabited rooms of the house, to satisfy himself once more that she was not hidden behind some cabinet, or door, or curtain—that he should not find her there with madness in her eyes, looking and looking, and yet not seeing him.

      But at last those five long days and nights were at an end, the funeral was over, and the carriages were returning through the park. When they had set out, a heavy rain was falling; but now the clouds were breaking up, and a gleam of sunshine was sparkling among the dripping boughs under which they were passing. This gleam fell upon a man on horseback who was jogging slowly along, and whom Mr. Gilfil recognized, in spite of diminished rotundity, as Daniel Knott, the coachman who had married the rosy-cheeked Dorcas ten years before.

      Every new incident suggested the same thought to Mr. Gilfil; and his eye no sooner fell on Knott than he said to himself ‘Can he be come to tell us anything about Caterina?’ Then he remembered that Caterina had been very fond of Dorcas, and that she always had some present ready to send her when Knott paid an occasional visit to the Manor. Could Tina have gone to Dorcas? But his heart sank again as he thought, very likely Knott had only come because he had heard of Captain Wybrow’s death, and wanted to know how his old master had borne the blow.

      As soon as the carriage reached the house, he went up to his study and walked about nervously, longing, but afraid, to go down and speak to Knott, lest his faint hope should be dissipated. Any one looking at that face, usually so full of calm goodwill, would have seen that the last week’s suffering had left deep traces. By day he had been riding or wandering incessantly, either searching for Caterina himself, or directing inquiries to be made by others. By night he had not known sleep—only intermittent dozing, in which he seemed to be finding Caterina dead, and woke up with a start from this unreal agony to the real anguish of believing that he should see her no more. The clear grey eyes looked sunken and restless, the full careless lips had a strange tension about them, and the brow, formerly so smooth and open, was contracted as if with pain. He had not lost the object of a few months’ passion; he had lost the being who was bound up with his power of loving, as the brook we played by or the flowers we gathered in childhood are bound up with our sense of beauty. Love meant nothing for him but to love Caterina. For years, the thought of her had been present in everything, like the air and the light; and now she was gone, it seemed as if all pleasure had lost its vehicle: the sky, the earth, the daily ride, the daily talk might be there, but the loveliness and the joy that were in them had gone for ever.

      Presently, as he still paced backwards and forwards, he heard steps along the corridor, and there was a knock at his door. His voice trembled as he said ‘Come in’, and the rush of renewed hope was hardly distinguishable from pain when he saw Warren enter with Daniel Knott behind him.

      ‘Knott is come, sir, with news of Miss Sarti. I thought it best to bring him to you first.’

      Mr. Gilfil could not help going up to the old coachman and wringing his hand; but he was unable to speak, and only motioned to him to take a chair, while Warren left the room. He hung upon Daniel’s moon-face, and listened to his small piping voice, with the same solemn yearning expectation with which he would have given ear to the most awful messenger from the land of shades.

      ‘It war Dorkis, sir, would hev me come; but we knowed nothin’ o’ what’s happened at the Manor. She’s frightened out on her wits about Miss Sarti, an’ she would hev me saddle Blackbird this mornin’, an’ leave the ploughin’, to come an’ let Sir Christifer an’ my lady know. P’raps you’ve heared, sir, we don’t keep the Cross Keys at Sloppeter now; a uncle o’ mine died three ’ear ago, an’ left me a leggicy. He was bailiff to Squire Ramble, as hed them there big farms on his hans; an’ so we took a little farm o’ forty acres or thereabouts, becos Dorkis didn’t like the public when she got moithered wi’ children. As pritty a place as iver you see, sir, wi’ water at the back convenent for the cattle.’

      ‘For God’s sake,’ said Maynard, ‘tell me what it is about Miss Sarti. Don’t stay to tell me anything else now.’

      ‘Well, sir,’ said Knott, rather frightened by the parson’s vehemence, ‘she come t’ our house i’ the carrier’s cart o’ Wednesday, when it was welly nine o’clock at night; and Dorkis run out, for she heared the cart stop, an’ Miss Sarti throwed her arms roun’ Dorkis’s neck an’ says, “Tek me in, Dorkis, tek me in,” an’ went off into a swoond, like. An’ Dorkis calls out to me,—“Dannel,” she calls—an’ I run out and carried the young miss in, an’ she come roun’ arter a hit, an’ opened her eyes, СКАЧАТЬ