Mr. Grey had done his work at last! The long waiting, the weary
constraint, and at last the recurrence of Lovedy's sufferings and her
own share in them, entirely overcame her. Mists danced before her eyes,
and the very sensation that had been so studiously avoided was produced
by her fainting helplessly away in her chair, while Mr. Grey was talking
to her.
To be sure it brought deliverance from the multitude, and she awoke
in the quiet of her room, upon her bed, in the midst of the despairing
compunction of the mother, and the tender cares of Grace, but she
was too utterly overdone for even this to be much relief to her; and
downstairs poor Miss Wellwood's one desire was to hinder the spread of
the report that her swoon had been caused by the tidings of Mauleverer's
apprehension. It seemed as if nothing else had been wanting to make the
humiliation and exposure complete. Rachel had despised fainting ladies,
and had really hitherto been so superabundant in strength that she had
no experience of the symptoms, or she might have escaped in time. But
there she lay, publicly censured before the dignitaries of her county
for moral folly, and entirely conquered before the rest of the world by
the physical weakness she had most contemned.
Then the mother was so terrified and distressed that all sorts of
comforting reassurances were required, and the chief object soon became
to persuade her to go downstairs and leave Rachel to her bed. And at
last the thought of civility and of the many Mrs. Grundys prevailed, and
sent her downstairs, but there was little more comfort for Rachel even
in being left to herself--that for which she had a few minutes before
most ardently longed.
That night was perhaps the most painful one of her whole life. The
earnest desire to keep her mother from uneasiness, and the longing to be
unmolested, made her play her part well when the mother and Grace came
up to see her before going to bed, and they thought she would sleep off
her over-fatigue and excitement, and yielded to her desire that they
should bid her good night, and leave her to rest.
But what sort of rest was it? Sometimes even her own personal identity
was gone, and she would live over again in the poor children, the
hunger and the blows, or she would become Mrs. Rawlins, and hear herself
sentenced for the savage cruelty, or she would actually stand in court
under sentence for manslaughter. Her pulses throbbed up to fever pitch,
head and cheeks burnt, the very power to lie still was gone, and whether
she commanded her thoughts or lapsed into the land of dreams, they
worked her equal woe.
Now it was the world of gazing faces, feverishly magnified, multiplied,
and pressing closer and closer on her, till she could have screamed to
dispel them; now it was her mother weeping over the reports to which she
had given occasion, and accusing herself of her daughter's errors; and
now it was Lovedy Kelland's mortal agony, now the mob, thirsting for
vengeance, were shouting for justice on her, as the child's murderer,
and she was shrieking to Alick Keith to leave her to her fate, and only
save her mother.