I am disfigured by a thoughtless use of water, to bring me to when I had my fall--and I can't get at my toilet-things to put myself right again. I don't wish to shock you. Please excuse the veil."
Emily remembered the rouge on her cheeks, and the dye on her hair, when they had first seen each other at the school. Vanity--of all human frailties the longest-lived--still held its firmly-rooted place in this woman's nature; superior to torment of conscience, unassailable by terror of death!
The good woman of the house waited a moment before she left the room. "What shall I say," she asked, "if the clergyman comes?"
Mrs. Rook lifted her hand solemnly "Say," she answered, "that a dying sinner is making atonement for sin. Say this young lady is present, by the decree of an all-wise Providence. No mortal creature must disturb us." Her hand dropped back heavily on the bed. "Are we alone?" she asked.
"We are alone," Emily answered. "What made you scream just before I came in?"
"No! I can't allow you to remind me of that," Mrs. Rook protested. "I must compose myself. Be quiet. Let me think."
Recovering her composure, she also recovered that sense of enjoyment in talking of herself, which was one of the marked peculiarities in her character.
"You will excuse me if I exhibit religion," she resumed. "My dear parents were exemplary people; I was most carefully brought up. Are you pious? Let us hope so."
Emily was once more reminded of the past.
The bygone time returned to her memory--the time when she had accepted Sir Jervis Redwood's offer of employment, and when Mrs. Rook had arrived at the school to be her traveling companion to the North. The wretched creature had entirely forgotten her own loose talk, after she had drunk Miss Ladd's good wine to the last drop in the bottle. As she was boasting now of her piety, so she had boasted then of her lost faith and hope, and had mockingly declared her free-thinking opinions to be the result of her ill-assorted marriage. Forgotten--all forgotten, in this later time of pain and fear. Prostrate under the dread of death, her innermost nature--stripped of the concealments of her later life--was revealed to view. The early religious training, at which she had scoffed in the insolence of health and strength, revealed its latent influence--intermitted, but a living influence always from first to last. Mrs. Rook was tenderly mindful of her exemplary parents, and proud of exhibiting religion, on the bed from which she was never to rise again.
"Did I tell you that I am a miserable sinner?" she asked, after an interval of silence.
Emily could endure it no longer. "Say that to the clergyman," she answered--"not to me."
"Oh, but I must say it," Mrs. Rook insisted. "I am a miserable sinner. Let me give you an instance of it," she continued, with a shameless relish of the memory of her own frailties. "I have been a drinker, in my time. Anything was welcome, when the fit was on me, as long as it got into my head. Like other persons in liquor, I sometimes talked of things that had better have been kept secret. We bore that in mind--my old man and I---when we were engaged by Sir Jervis. Miss Redwood wanted to put us in the next bedroom to hers--a risk not to be run. I might have talked of the murder at the inn; and she might have heard me. Please to remark a curious thing. Whatever else I might let out, when I was in my cups, not a word about the pocketbook ever dropped from me. You will ask how I know it. My dear, I should have heard of it from my husband, if I had let that out--and he is as much in the dark as you are. Wonderful are the workings of the human mind, as the poet says; and drink drowns care, as the proverb says. But can drink deliver a person from fear by day, and fear by night? I believe, if I had dropped a word about the pocketbook, it would have sobered me in an instant. Have you any remark to make on this curious circumstance?"
Thus far, Emily had allowed the woman to ramble on, in the hope of getting information which direct inquiry might fail to produce. It was impossible, however, to pass over the allusion to the pocketbook. After giving her time to recover from the exhaustion which her heavy breathing sufficiently revealed, Emily put the question:
"Who did the pocketbook belong to?"
"Wait a little," said Mrs. Rook. "Everything in its right place, is my motto. I mustn't begin with the pocketbook. Why did I begin with it? Do you think this veil on my face confuses me? Suppose I take it off. But you must promise first--solemnly promise you won't look at my face. How can I tell you about the murder (the murder is part of my confession, you know), with this lace tickling my skin? Go away--and stand there with your back to me. Thank you. Now I'll take it off. Ha! the air feels refreshing; I know what I am about. Good heavens, I have forgotten something! I have forgotten him. And after such a fright as he gave me! Did you see him on the landing?"
"Who are you talking of?" Emily asked.
Mrs. Rook's failing voice sank lower still.
"Come closer," she said, "this must be whispered. Who am I talking of?" she repeated. "I am talking of the man who slept in the other bed at the inn; the man who did the deed with his own razor. He was gone when I looked into the outhouse in the gray of the morning. Oh, I have done my duty! I have told Mr. Rook to keep an eye on him downstairs. You haven't an idea how obstinate and stupid my husband is. He says I couldn't know the man, because I didn't see him. Ha! there's such a thing as hearing, when you don't see. I heard--and I knew it again."
Emily turned cold from head to foot.
"What did you know again?" she said.
"His voice," Mrs. Rook answered. "I'll swear to his voice before all the judges in England."
Emily rushed to the bed. She looked at the woman who had said those dreadful words, speechless with horror.
"You're breaking your promise!" cried Mrs. Rook. "You false girl, you're breaking your promise!"
She snatched at the veil, and put it on again. The sight of her face, momentary as it had been, reassured Emily. Her wild eyes, made wilder still by the blurred stains of rouge below them, half washed away--her disheveled hair, with streaks of gray showing through the dye--presented a spectacle which would have been grotesque under other circumstances, but which now reminded Emily of Mr. Rook's last words; warning her not to believe what his wife said, and even declaring his conviction that her intellect was deranged. Emily drew back from the bed, conscious of an overpowering sense of self-reproach. Although it was only for a moment, she had allowed her faith in Mirabel to be shaken by a woman who was out of her mind.
"Try to forgive me," she said. "I didn't willfully break my promise; you frightened me."
Mrs. Rook began to cry. "I was a handsome woman in my time," she murmured. "You would say I was handsome still, if the clumsy fools about me had not spoiled my appearance. Oh, I do feel so weak! Where's my medicine?"
The bottle was on the table.