<h2> <SPAN name="XXX"> </SPAN> CHAPTER XXX. <br/><br/> <span class="small"> THE FIRE-BELL. </span> </h2>
<p>The doors of the rooms on either side were not only open but fastened
back; the sashes of the windows were all thrown up; and the rain,
which had followed when the east wind fell, had entered and made
puddles on the sills inside. Such a draught of air rushed down the
passage that Hardenow's lengthy skirts flickered out, in the orthodox
fashion, behind him.</p>
<p>At the end of this passage he came to a small alcove, fenced off with
a loose white curtain, shaking and jerking itself in the wind. He put
this aside with his stick; and two doorways, leading into separate
rooms, but with no doors in them, faced him. Something told him that
both these rooms held human life, or human death.</p>
<p>First he looked in at the one on the left. He expected to see lonely
death; perhaps corruption; or he knew not what. His nerves were strung
or unstrung (whichever is the medical way of putting it) to such a
degree that he wholly forgot, or entirely put by, everything, except
his own absorbing sense of his duty, as a man in holy orders. This
duty had never been practised yet in any serious way, because he had
never been able to afford it. It costs so much more money than it
brings in. However, in the midst of more lucrative work, he had felt
that he was sacred to it—rich or poor—and he often had a special
hankering after it. This leaning towards the cure of souls had a good
chance now of being gratified.</p>
<p>In the room on the left hand he saw a little bed, laid at the foot of
a fat four-poster, which with carved mouths grinned at it; and on this
little bed of white (without curtain, or trimming, or tester), lay a
lady, or a lady's body, cast down recklessly, in sleep or death, with
the face entirely covered by a silvery cloud of hair. From the manner
in which one arm was bent, Hardenow thought that the lady lived. There
was nothing else to show it. Being a young man, a gentleman also, he
hung back and trembled back from entering that room.</p>
<p>Without any power to "revolve things well," as he always directed his
pupils to do, Hardenow stepped to the other doorway, and silently
settled his gaze inside. His eyes were so worried that he could not
trust them, until he had time to consider what they told.</p>
<p>They told him a tale even stranger than that which had grown upon him
for an hour now, and passed from a void alarm into a terror; they
showed him the loveliest girl—according to their rendering—that ever
they had rested on till now; a maiden sitting in a low chair reading,
silently sometimes, and sometimes in a whisper, according to some
signal, perhaps, of which he saw no sign. There was no other person in
the room, so far as he could see; and he strained his eyes with
extreme anxiety to make out that.</p>
<p>The Rev. Thomas Hardenow knew (as clearly as his keen perception ever
had brought any knowledge home) that he was not discharging the
functions now—unless they were too catholic—of the sacerdotal
office, in watching a young woman through a doorway, without either
leave or notice. But though he must have been aware of this, it
scarcely seemed now to occur to him; or whether it did, or did not, he
went on in the same manner gazing.</p>
<p>The girl could not see him; it was not fair play. The width of great
windows, for instance, kept up such a rattling of blinds, and such
flapping of cords, and even the floor was so strewn with herbs (for
the sake of their aroma), that anybody might quite come close to
anybody who had cast away fear (in the vast despair of prostration),
without any sense of approach until perhaps hand was laid upon
shoulder. Hardenow took no more advantage of these things than about
half a minute. In that half-minute, however, his outward faculties
(being all alive with fear) rendered to his inward and endiathetic
organs a picture, a schema, or a plasm—the proper word may be left to
him—such as would remain inside, at least while the mind abode there.</p>
<p>The sound of low, laborious breath pervaded the sick room now and
then, between the creaking noises and the sighing of the wind. In
spite of all draughts, the air was heavy with the scent of herbs
strewn broadcast, to prevent infection—tansy, wormwood, rue, and
sage, burnt lavender and rosemary. The use of acids in malignant
fevers was at that time much in vogue, and saucers of vinegar and
verjuice, steeped lemon-peel, and such like, as well as dozens of
medicine bottles, stood upon little tables. Still Hardenow could not
see the patient; only by following the glance of the reader could he
discover the direction. It was the girl herself, however, on whom his
wondering eyes were bent. At first he seemed to know her face, and
then he was sure that he must have been wrong. The sense of doing
good, and the wonderful influence of pity, had changed the face of a
pretty girl into that of a beautiful woman. Hardenow banished his
first idea, and wondered what strange young lady this could be.</p>
<p>Although she was reading aloud, and doing it not so very badly, it was
plain enough that she expected no one to listen to her. The sound of
her voice, perhaps, was soothing to some one who understood no words;
as people (in some of the many unknown conditions of brain) have been
soothed and recovered by a thread of waterfall broken with a
walking-stick. At any rate, she read on, and her reading fell like
decent poetry.</p>
<p>Hardenow scarcely knew what he ought to do. He did not like to go
forward; and it was a mean thing to go backward, rendering no help,
when help seemed wanted so extremely. He peeped back into the other
room; and there was the lady with the fine white hair, sleeping as
soundly as a weary top driven into dreaming by extreme activity of
blows.</p>
<p>Nothing less than a fine idea could have delivered Hardenow from this
bad situation. It was suddenly borne in upon his mind that the house
had a rare old fire-bell, a relic of nobler ages, hanging from a bar
in a little open cot, scarcely big enough for a hen-roost; and Russel
had shown him one day, with a laugh, the corner in which the rope
hung. There certainly could be but very little chance of doing harm by
ringing it; what could be worse than the present state of things? Some
good Samaritan might come. No Levite was left to be driven away.</p>
<p>For Hardenow understood the situation now. The meaning of a very short
paragraph in the Oxford paper of Saturday, which he had glanced at and
cast by, came distinctly home to him. The careful editor had omitted
name of person and of place, but had made his report quite clear to
those who held a key to the reference. "How very dull-witted now I
must be!" cried the poor young fellow in his lonely trouble. "I ought
to have known it. But we never know the clearest things until too
late." It was not only for the sake of acquitting himself of an
awkward matter, but also in the hope of doing good to the few left
desolate, that Hardenow moved forth his legs, from the windy white
curtain away again.</p>
<p>He went down the passage at a very great pace, as nearly akin to a run
as the practice of long steady walks permitted; and then at the head
of the staircase he turned, and remembered a quiet little corner.
Here, in an out-of-the-way recess, the rope of the alarm-bell hung;
and he saw it, even in that niche, moving to and fro with the
universal draught. Hardenow seized it, and rang such a peal as the old
bell had never given tongue to before. The bell was a large one, sound
and clear; and the call must have startled the neighbourhood for a
mile, if it could be startled.</p>
<p>"Really, I do believe I have roused somebody at last!" exclaimed the
ringer, as he looked through a window commanding the road to the
house, and saw a man on horse-back coming. "But, surely, unless he
sprang out of the ground, he must have been coming before I began."</p>
<p>In this strange loneliness, almost any visitor would be welcome; and
Hardenow ran towards the top of the stairs to see who it was, and to
meet him. But here, as he turned the corner of the balustraded
gallery, a scared and hurrying young woman, almost ran into his arms.</p>
<p>"Oh, what is it?" she cried, drawing back, and blushing to a deeper
colour than well-extracted blood can show; "there is no funeral yet!
He is not dead! Who is ringing the bell so? It has startled even him,
and will either kill or save him! Kill him, it will kill him, I am
almost sure!"</p>
<p>"Esther—Miss Cripps—what a fool I am! I never thought of that—I did
not know—how could I tell? I am all in the dark! Is it Russel
Overshute?"</p>
<p>"Yes, Mr. Hardenow. Everybody knows it. Every one has taken good care
to run away. Even the doctors will come no more! They say it is
hopeless; and they might only infect their other patients. I fear that
his mother must die too! She has taken the fever in a milder form; but
walk she will, while walk she can. And at her time of life it is such
a chance. But I cannot stop one moment!"</p>
<p>"And at your time of life is it nothing, Esther? You seem to think of
everybody but yourself. Is this fair to your own hearth and home?"</p>
<p>While he was speaking he looked at her eyes; and her eyes were filling
with deep tears—a dangerous process to contemplate.</p>
<p>"Oh, no, there is no fear of that," she answered misunderstanding him;
"I shall take good care not to go home until I am quite sure that
there is no risk."</p>
<p>"That is not what I mean. I mean supposing you yourself should catch
it."</p>
<p>"If I do, they will let me stay here, I am sure. But I have no fear of
it. The hand that led me here will lead me back again. But you ought
not to be here. I am quite forgetting you."</p>
<p>Hardenow looked at her with admiration warmer than he could put into
words. She had been thinking of him throughout. She thought of every
one except herself. Even in the moment of first surprise she had drawn
away so that she stood to leeward; and while they were speaking she
took good care that the current of wind passed from him to her. Also
in one hand she carried a little chafing-dish producing lively
fumigation.</p>
<p>"Now, if you please, I must go back to him. Nothing would move him; he
lay for hours, as a log lies on a stone. I could not have knowledge
whether he was living, only for his breathing sometimes like a moan.
The sound of the bell seemed to call him to life, for he thought it
was his own funeral. His mother is with him; worn out as she is, the
lady awoke at his rambling. She sent me to find out the meaning. Now,
sir, please to go back round the corner; the shivering wind comes down
the passage."</p>
<p>Hardenow was not such a coward as to obey her orders. He even wanted
to shake hands with her, as in her girlhood he used to do, when he had
frightened this little pupil with too much emendation. But Esther
curtsied at a distance, and started away—until her retreat was cut
off very suddenly.</p>
<p>"Why, ho girl! Ho girl; and young man in the corner! What is the
meaning of all this? I have come to see things righted; my name is
Worth Oglander. I find this here old house silent as a grave, and you
two looking like a brace of robbers! Young woman!—young woman!—why,
bless me now, if it isn't our own Etty Cripps! I did believe, and I
would believe, but for knowing of your family, Etty, and your brother
Cripps the Carrier, that here you are for the purpose of setting this
old mansion afire!"</p>
<p>Esther, having been hard set to sustain what had happened already (as
well as unblest with a wink of sleep since Friday night), was now
unable to assert her dignity. She simply leaned against the wall, and
gently blew into the embers of her disinfecting stuff. She knew that
the Squire might kill himself, after all his weeks of confinement, by
coming over here, in this rash manner, and working himself up so. But
it was not her place to say a word; even if she could say it.</p>
<p>"Mr. Oglander," said Hardenow, coming forward and offering his hand,
while Esther looked at them from beneath a cloud of smoke, "I know
your name better than you know mine. You happened to be on the
continent when I was staying in your village. My name is Thomas
Hardenow. I am a priest of the Anglican Church, and have no intention
of setting anything on fire."</p>
<p>"Lor' bless me! Lord bless me! Are you the young fellow that turned
half the heads of Beckley, and made the Oxford examiners all tumble
back, like dead herrings with their jaws down? Cripps was in the
schools, and he told me all about it. And you were a friend of poor
Overshute. I am proud to make your acquaintance, sir."</p>
<p>"Master Cripps has inverted the story, I fear," Hardenow answered,
with a glance at Esther; while he could not, without rudeness, get his
hand out of the ancient Squire's (which clung to another, in this weak
time, as heartily as it used to do); "the examiners made a dry herring
of me. But I am very glad to see you, sir; I have heard of—at least,
I mean, I feared—that you were in weak health almost."</p>
<p>"Not a bit of it! I was fool enough—or rather I should say, my
sister—to have a lot of doctors down; fellows worth their weight in
gold, or at any rate in brass, every day of their own blessed lives;
and yet with that temptation even, they cannot lengthen their own
days. Of that I will tell you some other time. They kept me indoors,
and they drenched me with physic—this, that, and the other. God bless
you, sir, this hour of the air, with my own old good mare under me,
has done me more good—but my head goes round; just a little; not
anything to notice. Etty, my dear, don't you be afraid."</p>
<p>With these words the Squire sank down on the floor, not through any
kind of fit, or even loss of consciousness; but merely because his
fine old legs (being quite out of practice for so many weeks) had
found it a little more than they could do to keep themselves firm in
the stirrups, and then carry their master up slippery stairs, and
after that have to support a good deal of excitement among the trunk
parts.</p>
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