A Dark Night's Work by Elizabeth Gaskell Page A

Mr. Wilkins, ringing
the bell. "Fletcher can surely bring it." He dreaded the being left
alone with his daughter—nor did she fear it less. She heard the strange
alteration in her father's voice, hard and hoarse, as if it was an effort
to speak. The physical signs of his suffering cut her to the heart; and
yet she wondered how it was that they could both be alive, or, if alive,
they were not rending their garments and crying aloud. Mr. Wilkins
seemed to have lost the power of careless action and speech, it is true.
He wished to leave the room now his anxiety about his daughter was
relieved, but hardly knew how to set about it. He was obliged to think
about the veriest trifle, in order that by an effort of reason he might
understand how he should have spoken or acted if he had been free from
blood-guiltiness. Ellinor understood all by intuition. But henceforward
the unspoken comprehension of each other's hidden motions made their
mutual presence a burdensome anxiety to each. Miss Monro was a relief;
they were glad of her as a third person, unconscious of the secret which
constrained them. This afternoon her unconsciousness gave present pain,
although on after reflection each found in her speeches a cause of
rejoicing.
    "And Mr. Dunster, Mr. Wilkins, has he come home yet?"
    A moment's pause, in which Mr. Wilkins pumped the words out of his husky
throat:
    "I have not heard. I have been riding. I went on business to Mr.
Estcourt's. Perhaps you will be so kind as to send and inquire at Mrs.
Jackson's."
    Ellinor sickened at the words. She had been all her life a truthful
plain-spoken girl. She held herself high above deceit. Yet, here came
the necessity for deceit—a snare spread around her. She had not
revolted so much from the deed which brought unpremeditated death, as she
did from these words of her father's. The night before, in her mad fever
of affright, she had fancied that to conceal the body was all that would
be required; she had not looked forward to the long, weary course of
small lies, to be done and said, involved in that one mistaken action.
Yet, while her father's words made her soul revolt, his appearance melted
her heart, as she caught it, half turned away from her, neither looking
straight at Miss Monro, nor at anything materially visible. His hollow
sunken eye seemed to Ellinor to have a vision of the dead man before it.
His cheek was livid and worn, and its healthy colouring gained by years
of hearty out-door exercise, was all gone into the wanness of age. His
hair, even to Ellinor, seemed greyer for the past night of wretchedness.
He stooped, and looked dreamily earthward, where formerly he had stood
erect. It needed all the pity called forth by such observation to quench
Ellinor's passionate contempt for the course on which she and her father
were embarked, when she heard him repeat his words to the servant who
came with her broth.
    "Fletcher! go to Mrs. Jackson's and inquire if Mr. Dunster is come home
yet. I want to speak to him."
    "To him!" lying dead where he had been laid; killed by the man who now
asked for his presence. Ellinor shut her eyes, and lay back in despair.
She wished she might die, and be out of this horrible tangle of events.
    Two minutes after, she was conscious of her father and Miss Monro
stealing softly out of the room. They thought that she slept.
    She sprang off the sofa and knelt down.
    "Oh, God," she prayed, "Thou knowest! Help me! There is none other help
but Thee!"
    I suppose she fainted. For, an hour or more afterwards Miss Monro,
coming in, found her lying insensible by the side of the sofa.
    She was carried to bed. She was not delirious, she was only in a stupor,
which they feared might end in delirium. To obviate this, her father
sent far and wide for skilful physicians, who tended her, almost at the
rate of a guinea the minute.
    People said how hard it was upon Mr. Wilkins, that scarcely had that
wretch Dunster gone off, with no one knows how much out of the trusts of
the