Scenes of Clerical Life: Chapter 15

Chapter 15

It is a wonderful moment, the first time we stand by one who has fainted,
and witness the fresh birth of consciousness spreading itself over the
blank features, like the rising sunlight on the alpine summits that lay
ghastly and dead under the leaden twilight. A slight shudder, and the
frost-bound eyes recover their liquid light; for an instant they show the
inward semi-consciousness of an infant's; then, with a little start, they
open wider and begin to look; the present is visible, but only as a
strange writing, and the interpreter Memory is not yet there.

Mr. Gilfil felt a trembling joy as this change passed over Caterina's
face. He bent over her, rubbing her chill hands, and looking at her with
tender pity as her dark eyes opened on him wonderingly. He thought there
might be some wine in the dining-room close by. He left the room, and
Caterina's eyes turned towards the window--towards Sir Christopher's
chair. There was the link at which the chain of consciousness had
snapped, and the events of the morning were beginning to recur dimly like
a half-remembered dream, when Maynard returned with some wine. He raised
her, and she drank it; but still she was silent, seeming lost in the
attempt to recover the past, when the door opened, and Mr. Warren
appeared with looks that announced terrible tidings. Mr. Gilfil, dreading
lest he should tell them in Caterina's presence, hurried towards him with
his finger on his lips, and drew him away into the dining-room on the
opposite side of the passage.

Caterina, revived by the stimulant, was now recovering the full
consciousness of the scene in the Rookery. Anthony was lying there dead;
she had left him to tell Sir Christopher; she must go and see what they
were doing with him; perhaps he was not really dead--only in a trance;
people did fall into trances sometimes. While Mr. Gilfil was telling

Warren how it would be best to break the news to Lady Cheverel and Miss
Assher, anxious himself to return to Caterina, the poor child had made
her way feebly to the great entrance-door, which stood open. Her strength
increased as she moved and breathed the fresh air, and with every
increase of strength came increased vividness of emotion, increased
yearning to be where her thought was--in the Rookery with Anthony. She
walked more and more swiftly, and at last, gathering the artificial
strength of passionate excitement, began to run.

But now she heard the tread of heavy steps, and under the yellow shade
near the wooden bridge she saw men slowly carrying something. Soon she
was face to face with them. Anthony was no longer in the Rookery: they
were carrying him stretched on a door, and there behind him was Sir
Christopher, with the firmly-set mouth, the deathly paleness, and the
concentrated expression of suffering in the eye, which mark the
suppressed grief of the strong man. The sight of this face, on which
Caterina had never before beheld the signs of anguish, caused a rush of
new feeling which for the moment submerged all the rest. She went gently
up to him, put her little hand in his, and walked in silence by his side.
Sir Christopher could not tell her to leave him, and so she went on with
that sad procession to Mr. Bates's cottage in the Mosslands, and sat
there in silence, waiting and watching to know if Anthony were really
dead. She had not yet missed the dagger from her pocket; she had not yet
even thought of it. At the sight of Anthony lying dead, her nature had
rebounded from its new bias of resentment and hatred to the old sweet
habit of love. The earliest and the longest has still the mastery over
us; and the only past that linked itself with those glazed unconscious
eyes, was the past when they beamed on her with tenderness. She forgot
the interval of wrong and jealousy and hatred--all his cruelty, and all
her thoughts of revenge--as the exile forgets the stormy passage that lay
between home and happiness and the dreary land in which he finds himself
desolate.

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