The moment I opened the door of the study, I saw my uncle—in his think-chair, his head against the back of it, his face turned to the ceiling. I ran to his side and dropped on my knees, thinking he was dead. He opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a wan, woe-begone countenance, that I burst into a passion of tears.
“What is it, uncle dear?” I gasped and sobbed.
“Nothing very new, little one,” he answered.
“It is something terrible, uncle,” I cried, “or you would not look like that! Did those horrid men hurt you? You did give it them well! You came down on them like the angel on the Assyrians!”
“I don't know what you're talking about, little one!” he returned. “What men?”
“The men that came with John's mother to carry him off. If it hadn't been for my beautiful uncle, they would have done it too! How I wondered what had become of you! I was almost in despair. I thought you had left us to ourselves—and you only waiting, like God, for the right moment!”
He sat up, and stared at me, bewildered.
“I had forgotten all about John!” he said.
“As to what you think I did, I know nothing about it. I haven't been out of this room since I saw—that spectre in the kitchen.”
“John's mother, you mean, uncle?”
“Ah! she's John's mother, is she? Yes, I thought as much—and it was more than my poor brain could stand! It was too terrible!—My little one, this is death to you and me!”
My heart sank within me. One thought only went through my head—that, come what might, I would no more give up John, than if I were already married to him in the church.
“But why—what is it, uncle?” I said, hardly able to get the words out.
“I will tell you another time,” he answered, and rising, went to the door.
“John is going to London,” I said, following him.
“Is he?” he returned listlessly.
“He wants to see his lawyer, and try to get things on a footing of some sort between his mother and him.”
“That is very proper,” he replied, with his hand on the lock.
“But you don't think it would be safe for him to travel to-night—do you, uncle—so soon after his illness?” I asked.
“No, I cannot say I do. It would not be safe. He is welcome to stop till to-morrow.”
“Will you not tell him so, uncle? He is bent on going!”
“I would rather not see him! There is no occasion. It will be a great relief to me when he is able—quite able, I mean—to go home to his mother—or where it may suit him best.”
It was indeed like death to hear my uncle talk so differently about John. What had he done to be treated in this way—taken up and made a friend of, and then cast off without reason given! My dear uncle was not at all like himself! To say he forgot our trouble and danger, and never came near us in our sore peril, when we owed our deliverance to him! and now to speak like this concerning John! Something was terribly wrong with him! I dared hardly think what it could be.
I stood speechless.
My uncle opened the door, and went down the steps. The sound of his feet along the corridor and down the stair to the kitchen, died away in my ears. My life seemed to go ebbing with it. I was stranded on a desert shore, and he in whom I had trusted was leaving me there!
I came to myself a little, got the two five-pound-notes, and returned to John.
When I reached the door of the room, I found my heart in my throat, and my brains upside down. What was I to say to him? How could I let him go away so late? and how could I let him stay where his departure would be a relief? Even I would have him gone from where he was not wanted! I saw, however, that my uncle must not have John's death at his door—that I must persuade him to stay the night. I went in, and gave him the notes, but begged him, for my love, to go to bed. In the morning, I said, I would drive him to the station.
He yielded with difficulty—but with how little suspicion that all the time I wished him gone! I went to bed only to lie listening for my uncle's return. It was long past midnight ere he came.
In the morning I sent Penny to order the phaeton, and then ran to my uncle's room, in the hope he would want to see John before he left: I was not sure he had realized that he was going.
He was neither in his bed-room nor in the study. I went to the stable. Dick was putting the horse to the phaeton. He told me he had heard his master, two hours before, saddle Thanatos, and ride away. This made me yet more anxious about him. He did not often ride out early—seldom indeed after coming home late! Things seemed to threaten complication!
John looked so much better, and was so eager after the projected interview with his lawyer, that I felt comforted concerning him. I did not tell him what my uncle had said the night before. It would, I felt, be wrong to mention what my uncle might wish forgotten; and as I did not know what he meant, it could serve no end. We parted at the station very much as if we had been married half a century, and I returned home to brood over the strange things that had happened. But before long I found myself in a weltering swamp of futile speculation, and turned my thoughts perforce into other channels, lest I should lose the power of thinking, and be drowned in reverie: my uncle had taught me that reverie is Phaeton in the chariot of Apollo.
The weary hours passed, and my uncle did not come. I had never before been really uneasy at his longest absence; but now I was far more anxious about him than about John. Alas, through me fresh trouble had befallen my uncle as well as John! When the night came, I went to bed, for I was very tired: I must keep myself strong, for something unfriendly was on its way, and I must be able to meet it! I knew well I should not sleep until I heard the sounds of his arrival: those came about one o'clock, and in a moment I was dreaming.
In my dream I was still awake, and still watching for my uncle's return. I heard the sound of Death's hoofs, not on the stones of the yard, but on the gravel before the house, and coming round the house till under my window. There he stopped, and I heard my uncle call to me to come down: he wanted me. In my dream I was a child; I sprang out of bed, ran from the house on my bare feet, jumped into his down-stretched arms, and was in a moment seated in front of him. Death gave a great plunge, and went off like the wind, cleared the gate in a flying stride, and rushed up the hill to the heath. The wind was blowing behind us furiously: I could hear it roaring, but did not feel it, for it could not overtake us; we out-stripped and kept ahead of it; if for a moment we slackened speed, it fell upon us raging.
We came at length to the pool near the heart of the heath, and I wondered that, at the speed we were making, we had been such a time in reaching it. It was the dismalest spot, with its crumbling peaty banks, and its water brown as tea. Tradition declared it had no bottom—went down into nowhere.
“Here,” said my uncle, bringing his horse to a sudden halt, “we had a terrible battle once, Death and I, with the worm that lives in this hole. You know what worm it is, do you not?”
I had heard of the worm, and any time I happened, in galloping about the heath, to find myself near the pool, the thought would always come back with a fresh shudder—what if the legend were a true one, and the worm was down there biding his time! but anything more about the worm I had never heard.
“No, uncle,” I answered; “I don't know what worm it is.”
“Ah,” he answered, with a sigh, “if you do not take the more care, little one, you will some day learn, not what the worm is called, but what it is! The worm that lives there, is the worm that never dies.”
I gave a shriek; I had never heard of the horrible creature before—so it seemed in my dream. To think of its being so near us, and never dying, was too terrible.
“Don't be frightened, little one,” he said, pressing me closer to his bosom. “Death and I killed it. Come with me to the other side, and you will see it lying there, stiff and stark.”
“But, uncle,” I said, “how can it be dead—how can you have killed it, if it never dies?”
“Ah, that is the mystery!” he returned.
“But come and see. It was a terrible fight. I never had such a fight—or dear old Death either. But she's dead now! It was worth living for, to make away with such a monster!”
We rode round the pool, cautiously because of the crumbling banks, to see the worm lie dead. On and on we rode. I began to think we must have ridden many times round the hole.
“I wonder where it can be, uncle!” I said at length.
“We shall come to it very soon,” he answered.
“But,” I said, “mayn't we have ridden past it without seeing it?”
He laughed a loud and terrible laugh.
“When once you have seen it, little one,” he replied, “you too will laugh at the notion of having ridden past it without seeing it. The worm that never dies is hardly a thing to escape notice!”
We rode on and on. All at once my uncle threw up his hands, dropping the reins, and with a fearful cry covered his face.
“It is gone! I have not killed it! No, I have not! It is here! it is here!” he cried, pressing his hand to his heart. “It is here, and it was here all the time I thought it dead! What will become of me! I am lost, lost!”
At the word, old Death gave a scream, and laying himself out, flew with all the might of his swift limbs to get away from the place. But the wind, which was behind us as we came, now stormed in our faces; and presently I saw we should never reach home, for, with all Death's fierce endeavour, we moved but an inch or two in the minute, and that with a killing struggle.
“Little one,” said my uncle, “if you don't get down we shall all be lost. I feel the worm rising. It is your weight that keeps poor Death from making any progress.”
I turned my head, leaning past my uncle, so as to see behind him. A long neck, surmounted by a head of indescribable horror, was slowly rising straight up out of the middle of the pool. It should not catch them! I slid down by my uncle's leg. The moment I touched the ground and let go, away went Death, and in an instant was out of sight. I was not afraid. My heart was lifted up with the thought that I was going to die for my uncle and old Death. The red worm was on the bank. It was crawling toward me. I went to meet it. It sprang from the ground, threw itself upon me, and twisted itself about me. It was a human embrace, the embrace of some one unknown that loved me!
I awoke and left the dream. But the dream never left me.
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