There was still no one in the hall;she could go up to her room without the fear of being disturbed.She found the room,all white and black now with the gathering dusk.Beyond the window the evening breeze was rustling in the dark trees of the garden and the boom of the sea could be heard faintly.Mary sat,where she always sat when she was unhappy,inside the wardrobe with her head amongst the clothes.They in some way comforted her;she was not so lonely with them,nor did she feel so strongly the empty distances of the long room,the white light of the window-frames,nor the mysterious secrecy of the high elms knocking their heads together in the garden outside.
She had a fit of hysterical crying,biting the hanging clothes between her teeth,feeling suddenly sick and tired and exhausted,with flaming eyes and a dry,parched throat.Why had she ever done such a thing,she loving Jeremy as she did?Would he ever forgive her?No,never;she saw that in his face.Perhaps he would--if he found Hamlet quickly and came back.Perhaps Hamlet never would be found.Then Jeremy's heart would be broken.
She slept from utter exhaustion,and was so found,when the room was quite dark and only shadows moved in it,by her mother.
"Why,Mary!"said Mrs.Cole."What are you doing here?We couldn't think where you were.And where's Jeremy?""Jeremy!"She started up,remembering everything.
"Hasn't he come back?Oh,he's lost and he'll be killed,and it will be all my fault!"She burst into another fit of wild hysterical crying.
Her mother took her arm."Mary,explain--What have you done?"Mary explained,her teeth chattering,her head aching so that she could not see.
"And you shut him up like that?Whatever--Oh,Mary,you wicked girl!
And Jeremy--He's been away two hours now--"
She turned off,leaving Mary alone in the black room.
Mary was left to every terror that can beset a lonely,hysterical child--terror of Jeremy's fate,terror of Hamlet's loss,terror of her own crimes,above all,terror of the lonely room,the waving elms and the gathering dark.She could not move;she could not even close the door of the wardrobe,into whose shelter she had again crept.She stared at the white sheet of the window,with its black bars like railings and its ghostly hinting of a moon that would soon be up above the trees.Every noise frightened her,the working of the "separator"in a distant part of the farm,the whistling of some farm-hand out in the yard,the voice of some boy,"coo-ee"-ing faintly,the lingering echo of the vanished day--all these seemed to accuse her,to point fingers at her,to warn her of some awful impending punishment."Ah!you're the little girl,"they seemed to say,"who lost Jeremy's dog and broke Jeremy's heart."She was sure that someone was beneath her bed.That old terror haunted her with an almost humorous persistency every night before she went to sleep,but to-night there was a ghastly certainty and imminence about it that froze her blood.She crouched up against the hanging skirts,gazing at the black line between the floor and the white sheets,expecting at every second to see a protruding black mask,bloodshot eyes,a coarse hand.The memory of the burglary that they had had in the spring came upon her with redoubled force.Ah!surely,surely someone was there!She heard a movement,a scraping of a boot upon the floor,the thick hurried breathing of some desperate villain.
Then these fears gave way to something worse than them all,the certainty that Jeremy was dead.Ridiculous pictures passed before her,of Jeremy hanging from a tree,Jeremy lying frozen in the wood,the faithful Hamlet dead at his side,Jeremy stung by an adder and succumbing to his horrible tortures,Jeremy surrounded by violent men,who snatched Hamlet from him,beat him on the head and left him for dead on the ground.