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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