And Featherstonhaugh laughed. The whole party instinctively threw themselves between the two young men—the one red with fury, the other cool, with all the exasperation of which scorn and insult are capable.
"I will go with you, Roger," said the old vicar, hastily. "Perhaps I have sinned against my brother. But no—no, I would but hamper you. Be you the messenger of mercy, and God bless you, my boy! Go! go! before it is too late."
Thus he was pushed out of the room, Charley Landale going after him. "I'll not leave him," the good-natured fellow said quickly in Mary's ear as he passed.
Featherstonhaugh made no attempt to follow. He waited almost ostentatiously to give the other full time to be out of the way, and then he went home.
But neither Roger nor his companion could find any trace of Murray. No one had seen him or could discover where he had gone. Charley Landale went home, disconsolate and feeling half-guilty, to watch and wait for his friend's return, and to give what account of it he could to his family, such as would least prejudice them against their visitor, though even the little he said threw the house into confusion and agitation indescribable. The girls cried over poor Mr Murray; the kind mother, half-horrified at the risk her daughters had run of perhaps falling in love with a nobody, and half-sorry for the nobody himself, whose "feelings" must have been terribly "hurt," sat and talked it over, neglecting the dressing-bell, and scarcely conscious even of dinner. Dinner! ought they to wait for their guest, who had never come back? Charley went out wandering about the grounds, looking for him; and even old Mr Landale himself, though indignant with "the fellow" at first, had come to be anxious too, and stared from the only window that commanded the road. But Murray never came. They ate their dinner at last when it was cold, and everything was wretched, listening to every sound outside, and starting at every footstep as if it was one of themselves who was in deadly peril and trouble. When night came, Charley, good fellow, would not go to bed, but sat and dozed, keeping a light burning in the window which was visible from the road. But, notwithstanding all their cares for him, and all the sympathy and kindness that dictated them, Murray never appeared; His things lay about his room as he had left them when he went out, light of heart, expecting to return for dinner; but he himself entered these hospitable doors no more.
The object of all these anxieties lurked somewhere among the woods in one of the shady nooks he had known when he was a boy, and which probably no one but himself and his old rustic companions knew, in the very madness of misery, while the daylight lasted. He hid himself like the first sinners—he could not bear the calm eye of the day, the cold unpitying light, that would show him and point him out to the scrutiny of men. He lay thus panting on the earth, hidden by the bushes, his mind and all his being in so wild a turmoil that, after a while, the very cause of it got obscure in his mind, and he knew only that he was a fugitive, heart-broken, ruined, and disgraced, without knowing why. He had no sooner reached a covert in the copse than there seemed to gleam before him another, better hiding-place, a cool nook by a little stream, where nobody could ever find him, where he could have a draught of water when he pleased, and the trickle of the brook to bear him company. As soon as it was dark he made his way out of the chase, and fled along the most unfrequented paths, under hedgerows and across fields, to reach this place. The country was very still, Sunday night, no one about, no one stirring anywhere. Here and there he made a detour to escape the lighted windows of a roadside cottage, whence some one might look out and see him: sometimes shrank aside into a ditch or under a tree when he saw some solitary passenger in the distance—but met no one, saw no one, and at last came to the shelter he had thought of. It was deep down among thick brushwood, heather, and whins, and young birch-trees, by the side of a little stream which flowed from the hills to the lake. The ground was damp, but he did not care. He dipped his burning brow in the stream, and drank long draughts of it. This gave him a little relief, a little physical ease; and the walk had been long, and he was unused to so much exertion. Finally, he fell asleep, with his head, like Jacob's, on a stone. The shock he had sustained seemed to take from Abel all consciousness of any claims upon him or duties to the outside world. He remembered nothing about the Landales, thought nothing of where he was to go when the morning should come, again betraying him. He thought indeed of no morning, only of safety from some immediate danger, though he could not tell what that was.
It was a very lonely place, but abounding with wild creatures—rabbits and squirrels, every kind of grasshopper and harmless insect, water-rats, moorfowl, and myriads of existences too small for names. He was woke by them as he lay, early—very early, before any human thing was stirring. He had slept feverishly, by intervals, through the night, and he woke up to a less confused sense of his misery in the morning. Gradually it broke upon him as the light came disclosing the landscape, creeping on and on. Oh, the horror of the remembering, the misery of shame, the intolerable sense of weakness, wrong, resentment, and impotence! Why was it so? Why was he born a cotter's son? Why was it a disgrace to him? How horrible! that he should be banished from the company of men, driven out into the wilds, aching every nerve of him, body and soul, miserable, abandoned, troubled, all because he was a cotter's son! Oh, wrong at which earth and heaven should cry out! Abel was not capable of realising that nothing but his own falsehood, his own cowardice, could have made his birth a shame to him—he was far beyond such an exercise of reason. He looked down from among his ferns and bushes to where the peaceful house of the Landales, where he should have been sleeping now in safety but for this, lay among the trees, and beyond it, on the banks of the shining water, saw the old Castle, whence he had been driven out, "to eat grass with the beasts of the field." That was what the old Eastern potentate had been sentenced to: was it to behisfate too? Somehow it gave the poor fugitive, half-distraught, a kind of forlorn comfort to remember that old story. His thoughts went back to the old Bible lessons he remembered long ago. What had the king done to have such a fate? and what hadhedone? But it gave him a little ease to realise that this had happened to some one else before.
And where was he to go? He could not show his face in this familiar place, which had again grown so dear. He would go back—back to his lonely rooms in Oxford, where he ought to be safe, he thought. But how to get there, how to stir in that garish, lavish day, which flooded every dark corner with light, so that the water-newts and earth insects had much ado to get themselves into some covert place, and how was he to walk unseen, a man? He was faint for want of food, aching with the unusual exposure, his clothes wet and torn, his hat he did not know where, his head throbbing and buzzing and all confused. But yet he might have come round out of the painful bewilderment he was in; his thoughts began to take a little shape, his mind began to occupy itself with a practical question—how to get home unseen, how to get to the road and the railway, and go back whence he had come. All might have come again to something like nature—nature sore and bleeding and wounded to the heart, but yet able to command herself, able to be restored.
But just as he had worked to this hopeful point, a jar and rustling in the branches woke every pulse in his frame again. Who was it? He peered through his covert with his bloodshot eyes, and at first saw nothing. Then gradually he distinguished something moving among the copsewood and tall bushes of heather. Who was it? What was it? A man, coming towards his hiding-place, pushing his way through the trees, leaping across the rivulets in the bog, here sinking in the marshy places, then reappearing, coming ever nearer and nearer. Abel stretched up across his little stream to watch this advancing figure, fascinated. Was it some one in search of him? Then he sat down, pulling the heather and brushwood over him to escape detection. The sounds came on, then stopped, quite close,—so close that Abel felt his very breathing would betray him. "Are you there, Ridley?" said a voice close to his ear. "So you have kept tryst. I scarcely expected you would. Get up, wherever you are, and come out." Then, after a pause, in an angry tone he added, "Is this a time for fooling? Come out, wherever you are. I can't wait here."
Abel was like one of the branches quivering over him, one moment blown this way, another that way, as different impulses swept across him. He had covered himself with the bushes, shrinking into the very earth for safety. Now, with a sudden change of idea, he sprang out from his lair, suddenly confronting Featherstonhaugh with his wild looks and haggard face. "My God!" cried the new-comer, springing backward in consternation and alarm. He did not recognise at first the extraordinary figure. Abel was very pale, his head was uncovered, his eyelids red as blood, his clothes all wet and soiled and torn. With a sudden fierceness he pursued after the other, keeping his wild eyes fixed upon him with a glare of passion and madness in them. No wonder Featherstonhaugh was afraid. "Is it you, Murray?" he said, faltering. "I—beg your pardon. I thought it was Ridley; he was to meet me here, this morning, about the boundary line. The two estates—march. We had—words yesterday, and I scarcely expected him. I am afraid you have not spent a—comfortable night?"
"Yes, I have," said Abel, hoarsely; "better than among men—better than with the false and cruel——"
"You take it too seriously, I am sure," said the other. "What does it matter who is a man's father I We are the child of our own actions, nowadays; only, if you will do me a favour, don't go any more to the Castle. It would do you no good, and it might—do harm."
"Are you my master?" said Abel.
"No, no. Don't be excited. I ask it as a favour. Don't go. I am not taking ground as your superior, Murray."
"Are you—my superior?"
"Well, yes," said the other, with a careless laugh, growing less afraid, and feeling that in his coolness he had the upper hand; "we need not inquire into that, need we? Go home, like a good fellow, and get some breakfast. You must be cramped, lying out all night—have you been there all night?"
"Who are you that speak to me as if I were your slave? Do you think I—will do whatyoutell me—You! Who are you that give me orders?"
"Come," said the other; "Murray, you know this will never do. You've been drinking. Go home."
"I have been—what?" shrieked the unhappy young man.
"Don't make it more evident than it is. I said drinking," said Featherstonhaugh. "Now go home."
But Abel sprang at his throat before he was aware. It was an impulse, like the other. A sudden flash and tingle of passion, and then a spring. Featherstonhaugh fell like a stone among the brushwood and broken stones of the hillside, with the grip of the madman on his neck. He was a madman now. The wavering of the mental balance, which might have been restored an hour ago, was over for ever. This second assault concluded the struggle. With no enforcement of artificial restraint, nothing but the two, in face of each other, on the lonely hillside, passion leaped into frenzy in a moment. He gripped his victim by the throat and there was a long and horrible struggle; then, when the other lay still and ceased to resist, Abel, laughing wildly, got upon his knees and struck at the helpless, prostrate figure, beating him into the bog, cruelly repeating blow on blow, blow on blow—long after all blows were needless. He kept on with a convulsive motion, rising with every stroke, like a child when it imitates the action of riding, showering down his blows, with a stick which he had picked up—with a stone, with his hands—in a fury which by-and-by degenerated into horrible, senseless play, and monotonous repetition of an act which no longer meant anything; not homicidal passion—not mad rage, but only the horrible play of a distracted brain.
But by-and-by another sound roused him—the sound of a step crashing among the branches once more. With a vague recollection in his madness that some one else was coming, he rose, all bloody and horrible, and looked about him. Some man or other stood within a few feet of him on the other side of the little stream. Some one who called to him, who hurried forward, jumping the brook. The madman knew nothing, who it was, or what he wanted; but frenzy and fear are ever akin. He turned round wildly, faced to the hills, and fled like an arrow from the bow.
It was morning, and all the usual business was well begun; the cows were out in their pasture on the hillside; the chickens about the close vicinity of the house; nothing was audible except their busy cackle and the hum of the bees, which Elizabeth Murray kept, and which were one of her sources of income—and her own steps coming and going in her house. Before you came in sight of the house you could hear those brisk steps, stately and harmonious, giving a sign of life in the pleasant stillness. Dick was in the potato-field close by; there had been a fine crop, and he was digging them up for the market at Waterside. He was whistling as he worked, but Elizabeth, whose mind was full of many cares, did not sing snatches now of one song, now of another, as was her wont. How seldom it is that the mother of children has not occasion for anxiety about one or another! and it seemed to her that she had so much. Lily; what should she do with Lily if the girl grumbled at the loneliness, as she was likely to do, or pined for her friends, and for the admiration she had called forth? All that would be natural—quite natural. After half consenting to leave her daughter and to trust to her prudence, Elizabeth had been seized with a panic on her return home, and had sent instructions that Lily should return on Monday morning; and now again she was doubtful, as was also so natural, of the wisdom of the step she had taken. How would Lily bear the solitude? Up here among the hills, nothing except the household work and the mild vicissitudes of the chickens and the cows ever happened. Elizabeth herself did not mind, because, as she said to herself, she was old, and all that was likely to happen to her in this world had happened and was done with; and Dick did not mind, for he had not begun yet to think of anything beyond his work, and life was all before him, and he had been accustomed to the tranquillity all his days—but Lily!
And on the other hand, there was Abel to think of—the lost boy—who yet was so much greater and happier and better off than ever Elizabeth could have made him. She sighed, but took herself to task for it, declaring to herself with tears in her eyes that she did not grudge his grandeur—that it was for his happiness she cared, not for her happiness through him. "But oh, it cannot come to good that he should think shame of his own folks," she sighed in the depths of her heart. Yet it was so pleasant to think of him as "a gentleman." It seemed to Elizabeth that if she could but see him enjoying that high estate, courted and made much of by the great folks of the land, she would not want to speak to him or betray him. Oh, far from that! She would live in the house with him and never betray him.
Thus she was going on peacefully about her domestic work: the chickens cackling outside, Dick whistling in the fields, the brook trickling over the stones, the bees humming, everything full of the warmth and softness of the summer day. The air was such that unless you were ill or in trouble you gave God thanks, unenvious of other blessings, for nothing but the day; and Elizabeth was a woman subject to such influences, and, in spite of her cares, a softening of happiness stole into her mind. After all, was not everything well? However anxious she might be, there was no trouble in her family. Lily was not disobedient, and Abel, though he did not come to see his family, yet "took an interest" in them. There was no reason why she should not let the sunshine and the sweetness steal into her heart, and allow herself to acknowledge that all was well.
"Dick," she cried from the window, "lad, do you no hear a sound of somebody coming? I think I hear a step by times, and surely somebody cried to us, coming up the hill. Did you not hear?"
Dick stuck his spade into the soil, and, listening, said, "Mother, I heard nothing. But now I'm quiet, ay, that was a sound."
"It's maybe Lily," said the mother.
"Lily's foot's too light to sound so far. But we'll see soon enough when they come," said Dick, resuming his digging. He resumed his whistle too. He was not curious. Whoever it was, would not they show themselves soon enough? And in the meantime he had his work. Elizabeth, too, went in, and went to her dairy, accepting Dick's philosophy. To be sure! there was nothing so much to be expected but that when it appeared would be time enough. Time enough! And so their life went on tranquil for ten long sunny minutes more.
About that time both of them held their breath and stopped their work. Dick stuck his spade again in the half-dug row of potatoes. Elizabeth came out to the door. A hurrying, headlong step, coming on in mad haste, now ceasing for a moment as it reached the bog, coming nearer, rushing on—with other sounds, broken cries, gaspings and pantings, as of somebody hunted, came to their ears. While the mother and son listened in growing alarm, old Watch, the dog—most steady of dogs—suddenly raised his old black muzzle and gave vent to a long wailing bark of alarm, which echoed through the hills. Terror fell upon the minds of the mother and son. What was it? The light seemed to go out of the sky, the echoes to tingle all about them. These wild hurrying sounds did not come even by the usual path, but, as Dick perceived sooner than his mother, descended from the higher way, a way no one ever came. This was how it was that when the new-comer reached the place at last, Elizabeth did not see him. She knew nothing till he was close upon her. A terrible figure, bare-headed, bloody, his clothes hanging torn about him, his face ghastly and distorted, strange, harsh, broken sounds coming from his lips. She turned round only when he was within a few steps of her, when she saw him, and with a shriek of terror threw up her arms and started out of his way. Dick came rushing to her help; but the stranger heeded neither of them. He burst into the house, and threw himself, all convulsed and shivering, before the kitchen fire.
"God help us, Dick—it's a madman!" cried Elizabeth. "What will we do?"
They both stood in terror at the door. There was a moment's pause of horror and dismay. Dick was pale, but he was brave. "Go you and shut yourself in the byre, mother, and I will see——"
"Nay, nay, my lad; your mother's life is less worth than yours. But look at Watch!" she said, with a strange thrill at her heart.
Watch had been taken by surprise, and struck with terror as well as themselves. He had run terrified out of the way with another howl when the man rushed past. But now he had followed into the kitchen, without either fear or anger apparently. "He never can bide a tramp," Elizabeth said, with a strange aching wonder in her heart. They could see the huddled mass of shivering limbs before the fire. Watch went in, cautiously snuffed all round the prostrate figure, and then began slowly to wag his tail—slowly at first, and then with an appearance of wild joy, and yelps and barks of welcome. Elizabeth Murray's heart seemed to stand still. She gave Dick a look of horrible suspicion and misery. Then she made a gesture to him to keep behind her, and went in with the silence and swiftness of a ghost.
The terrible being who had thus arrived upon them had fallen down on the floor, apparently in a fit. He was lying writhing and struggling before the fire, his face distorted, his eyes glaring, foam and blood on his mouth. She went in and bent over him, then knelt down by him. She had not seen him since he was a boy. He had been twelve years old when he had gone away. She looked at him now, knowing before she looked who it was. Heaven help her! had she ever been light of heart, peaceful, happy, though this was coming? Was it years ago since she stood at her door and heard Dick whistling and the bees humming? She knew who it was even before she looked. She knew him for all his convulsed face, his terrible struggles and contortions. Abel! her son—who was a gentleman, who was too grand for his own people. The dog, faithful brute, with a truer memory than even the mother's, was licking the terrible face. She gave a great outcry, words and sobs together. "It's Watch that knows him, and not me, first!" she said.
Then she got water and dashed in his face, and rubbed his stiffened hands. She did not even know what to do for him. She knelt by his side, her face too as pale as death, unconscious cries coming from her—"Oh my lad! Oh be still! Oh let him be, good Lord, let him be!" She did not know what she said. And Dick, with a face blanched to the colour of his linen, kept plucking at her sleeve and calling softly, "Mother?" She took no notice for a long time, then irritated by the repetition turned upon him sharply, "What is it, lad?" Dick could not get any question out of his parched lips, he only looked at her and then at the writhing figure on the floor, "Can you not see for yourself?" she cried, with a groan in which there was a kind of wild incredulous laugh. "Can you not tell without asking? It's my boy Abel, him that's a gentleman; our pride and our joy!"
How the rest of the horrible morning went they never knew. Their peaceful occupations were all abandoned. In the midst of their cares for Abel—whom after a while they managed to get transferred to a bed, when the fit going off left him half unconscious and entirely prostrate—arrived Lily, all unaware of any new event at home, but with the news that a horrible murder had been discovered—Sir Richard Featherstonhaugh lying dead on the hillside, all beaten and battered. This did not seem to Elizabeth, for the moment at least, any concern of theirs; but when Lily, very frightened and half reluctant, was taken up-stairs to see her brother in his raving sleep, a gleam of painful light, a dawning of some horror seemed to gleam among them, though they could not perceive what it revealed. Lily turned from the room where lay the stranger whom they called her brother Abel, with a suppressed shriek. "It's the gentleman!" she cried; and when she had told all her story the little awe-stricken party looked each other in the face, each paler than the other, not knowing what to think. "Was he—friends—with the lad that's killed?" Elizabeth asked, turning away her face. She could not allow her children to perceive the dawn of meaning in it. When Lily replied by a tremulous account of how and when she had seen them together, Elizabeth made no comment, but by-and-by she went up-stairs and returned with the clothes Abel had worn, made up into a bundle. Lily, whose attention was still unaroused, did not notice what her mother did. But Dick, who had watched her closely, went out after her, and found her burying her bundle deep in the potato-field where he had been digging. With tremulous energy she threw up the easily dug soil, making a deep hole in a corner. She said nothing in explanation of what she did, even to him, nor did he ask—but she took hold of his arm to help her to the higher level on which he stood, and gripped it with a convulsive strain. "God grant I'm a' wrong," she said, looking as if she had been turned to stone. "Ay, mother," said Dick. It would have been more comforting to her if he had not understood her so well.
But the events of the day were not yet over; enough, indeed, had passed already to make it terrible. All this peaceful life, which had been so quiet this morning, had disappeared from them, and in its place had come a mystery and horror such as surely never before had come upon decent folk. Who thought of the mild beasts in the field, the cows grazing, the bees keeping up that busy hum of undisturbed labour, the milk that was setting in the dairy, the eggs to be gathered, all the soft growth and production of nature that was going on for their benefit? The whole had been swept away from their thoughts by this sudden wreck, this falling among them of a ruined being, a distracted life. How many anguishes had come with him! terror, suspicion, crime! and yet it was all guess-work, and there might be nothing after all but madness in poor Abel's misery. Nothing but madness! which would have seemed the most horrible of miseries yesterday, but now would be a relief from other fears. There was only Lily in the house who did not entertain these fears. She had not seen him come flying like a hunted creature to the one place that could shelter him. She had not associated him with the murder of which, on the other hand, her mind was full. Only yesterday Featherstonhaugh had spoken to her, had tried to "court" her; had made an effort to take her hand and draw her to him; and now he was murdered—murdered! lying in his blood, scarcely recognisable! The story had been brought to the village with all its terrible details before Lily started, and she could not but go over them in her mind. So living, such power in him, such a grand gentleman! and now with the life beaten out of him, a piece of dishonoured clay! She sat down and cried, sitting by the door, while her mother watched the other gentleman, who was her brother she could not tell how. Lily sat alone in the solitude, and wept, partly for the murdered man, partly out of vague agitation and excitement, partly for herself, who had lost all pleasant things and pleasant prospects. What was there for her now but solitude and forgetfulness, all the delights of her youth over and done? She put up her hand to the little ribbon with its hidden locket round her neck. Oh how sweet it had been to receive that secret treasure! and now it was all that was left to her. In all likelihood she would never, never see the giver more.
"Lily!" said a voice near to her. She gave a great start and cry and rose to her feet. Had he come after her—and so soon? Notwithstanding the sense of trouble about her, Lily's heart rose; but there was nothing encouraging in the face of the lover whom she supposed to have come after her. He was pale and haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his frame trembling. "Where is he? Has he come here?" he cried. Of her, in the old tender winning way, he took no notice at all; if it had been Dick, Roger Ridley could not have been more indifferent. "Has he come here?" he repeated, almost with impatience. Lily was wounded in her foolish expectations. "How am I to tell who you mean?" she said. She stood in the door barring his passage. The attitude meant a great deal more than was in Lily's mind. She looked like the guardian and defender of the secret that had come into the house.
Elizabeth, who was above, heard the voices and came to the window, which she opened softly, looking out with anxious eyes. "I will not betray him," she heard Roger say. Then he looked up and saw her, and beckoned to her to come down. Elizabeth hesitated only for a moment. She must hear sooner or later all there was to say. She must find out how to defend her boy, and what he might be accused of. She locked the door upon him as he lay there moaning in a stupor which was scarcely sleep, and came down. She was but a common woman, with nothing to distinguish her from the other cotters in the dale; but as she went slowly to the door to hear her son's sentence, so to speak, she marched unconsciously as a martyr might to his death. What would death have been in comparison of this which she had to face?
"I have not come here to betray him," said Roger, "but neither need you try to hide it from me. I saw him—God help me! shall I ever get it out of my eyes? I saw him, but I was too late to save. I saw him kneeling, striking at him, striking at him! God! I think I see it now."
He leant against the wall looking as if he would faint; but Elizabeth did not faint. She stood, the colour of death, with her arms crossed upon her bosom. If there had been any possibility of denial or resistance she would have resisted and denied; but there was none, and she needed no explanation. "He is mad," she said, "mad—he's no responsible—mad! Do you hear what I say?"
"I've tracked him all the way," said Roger. "I know he must have been here hours ago; more than one metme, but no one had seen him. God knows what people may think of the trouble I was in. I thought after a time it might put them on the scent, and then I asked no further questions; but no one had seen him. They will not think of looking for him here, if you are prudent; but you must keep him still, and not let him move. Give me a draught of milk and I will go home and watch over everything. If it is suspected where he is I will send you word."
"Mr Ridley, I will pray for you night and day on my bended knees," said Elizabeth. "Oh, he's mad, my lad! he's no responsible. And oh, you, a stranger, to take this burden upon you! What can I say? what can I say?"
"I saw him by accident," said Roger. "God help us. I am perhaps to blame; he got insult through me, and he saved my life; and Lily," said the young man, turning for a moment to look at her—"but all that's over now," he added, with a sigh.
Lily had sat down on the step by the house door. She had hidden her face in her hands and was weeping quietly, overpowered by the despair about her. He was near enough to be within reach of her, and he put his hand on her head. "Yes, it's over," he said, "it's all over," with a sudden break of sobs in his voice. Who could think of happiness, or love, or anything sweet in life now? His heart was sick with wretchedness and horror. Roger did not know how he was ever to take up the common things of existence again, how to get that spectacle out of his eyes.
It was Elizabeth herself who brought him out and served to him, solemnly, as if it had been a sacrament, those simplest elements of food, the common oaten cake and bowl of milk which was their ordinary cottage fare. Lily sat and wept—her heart was broken—but the mother, with her heavier burden, did everything. The two young creatures thrown down there in moaning and despair—she leaning her head against the cottage wall, he lying on the turf with his face buried in his hands, were lightly weighted in comparison; but Elizabeth's heart yearned over them, sorry for the trouble they were so much less capable of bearing. "You must not stay here," she said to Roger, softly. "Oh, God bless you, my young gentleman, and put me and mine out of your head, and all that's happened this dreadful day! But you're rested now, and you mustna bide here."
Roger rose reluctantly from the grass; the moment of rest had softened his heart. He stood, looking disconsolately, wistfully, at the girl whom he had so foolishly loved. He knew how foolish it had always been, and it had fled from him like a shadow in presence of all the terrible events of the morning. But when he looked back upon her now, seated there in all the abandonment of the catastrophe, her pale face lying back against the grey wall, her pretty hair falling from the comb, her eyes shut, and two great tears stealing down her cheeks, a great pang went through Roger's heart. Love and honour and pain strove in him. Could he take her to him under this shadow of madness and ruin? Could he leave her without a word? He stood for a moment irresolute—then made a hasty step towards her, and stooping down, kissed her forehead. "Farewell, my Lily! Farewell, my Lily!" he said, then turned, and went quickly away. Lily uttered a low moaning cry—she made no other response. It was all over, all over! There was nothing more to say.
Then the silence of the hills fell around the little house, folded up with its secret in it, among the great slopes of the mountains. The first night fell upon them, half a benediction in its darkness and quiet, half an aggravation of the unseen dangers that now seemed to hem them in. Dick sat up and watched all night, while his mother sat by the bedside of the fugitive, who lay between stupor and raving, and had recognised none of them, though they thought he was soothed by his mother's presence and touch. Long were the hours of darkness, though so few in the soft summer weather, which was then exceptionally soft for the north. As for Lily, she was made to go to bed, with kind tyranny, by both mother and brother, and slept, and was ashamed of herself for sleeping. And then came the dawn again, tranquil and awful, the first morning after the calamity,—the revelation of that changed world in which no longer all was well. But the cows and the chickens had to be looked to all the more that they had been neglected the night before, and that was a consolation so far as it went. The day went on quietly enough. They were on the alert for every sound, and Watch was posted out on the hillside at a little distance to give an alarm if any one should come; but no one came. And whatever might be doing down in the low country, whatsoever course suspicion might be taking, whether Abel was thought of at all in connection with the murder, or who was thought of instead of him, here none could tell. Lily, heartsick, did her share of the work, casting wistful looks down the road, and letting her heart and her eyes roam downwards upon the water far in the distance, radiant with sunshine, or dim with shadow, where all the business of life was being enacted, though she knew not how. The others were glad (if that could be called gladness) when the day was over without any incident; but oh how long was the day to Lily, with her heart fluttering away upon the far horizon, and this killing silence round her! And it was all over, the other life, all over! Was this henceforward to be the tenor of her days: this and the madman up-stairs who was said to be her brother? Had ever any one before so hard a lot to bear? Lily repeated to herself that her mother was old, and "wrapt-up" in "the boys," and Dick "did not mind;" but she who had no boys, and was not old, and whose life was over, all over! What was there so forlorn and terrible as this fate which had fallen upon her?
It had come to be dark again; night falling, the time of terror, and great stars coming out into the sky, peering over the shoulders of the hills, and leaning out of the blue to see all that could be seen. The family had come in and shut their door; never on a summer night had that door been shut before; but it was always a bulwark the more in defence of the wretched one within. Elizabeth came and went between the room where he lay and the kitchen, where Lily sat by the smouldering fire, crying in the darkness. There was no light in the room; they wanted no light to be wretched by, and even the glimmer of the little lamp on the high mantelpiece might betray them. The fire smouldered, a red speck and no more in the darkness, and the low, square windows hung like faint pictures on the wall. Dick was outside. It was not possible for him to be confined in a room with closed doors. The night was thus darkening over them, and dreariness and stillness falling like a pall, when all the echoes were suddenly roused by the harsh, hoarse bark of Watch baying, with his head up and wide throat extended. Elizabeth, who was standing by Lily, took hold of her suddenly, grasping her trembling frame with two passionate hands. This filled the girl with additional terror; but it was her mother's silent way of strengthening herself, and bracing herself for what was to come. Then Dick appeared, the defender of the house. They could see him take his stand in front of the door, to protect the entrance. Then there came a sound of voices, and Lily sprang to her feet. "He's come back again, mother!" she said.
"There may be more with him," said Elizabeth; but she opened the door, with jealous care, showing half of herself only, to parley. Was it Roger, that dark figure against the light outside? He came pushing in with a kind of rude imperativeness. "Do you try to keep me out?" he said. "No, we are all in the same ship now. Let me in. I have nowhere else to go."
"Is there more ill news to hear?" said Elizabeth.
"More ill news? No, not for you. Listen; but first light a lamp or something, that I may see who I'm talking to. That's better. Yesterday," said Roger, with a curious laugh, "I could speak freely what I wanted to say without thinking of the dark or the light."
"What is it, tell me what it is?—I must go to my lad that is alone."
"Alone! is he worse than others?" said Roger, fiercely; and then he added, laughing again, "they say it was I—I—that did it! I have fled from my father's house not to be taken up for murder. Oh, God!" he cried, with a tone of agony. They all echoed it with one impulse. "You?" they said, and Lily broke out wildly crying, half hysterical with the misery which seemed to have its crown of anguish now.
"But no, no, it canna be! you have proofs to the contrary," cried Elizabeth, upon whom this seemed an appeal against herself.
"They can prove everything," he said, with the calm of one who knew the worst. "I had an appointment with him there for that morning. I was seen going away, looking like a man that had killed another. I had quarrelled with him (oh, poor Dick, poor Dick! I knew him all my life!) the day before. There is no one but believes it. We are all in the same box," said Roger, sitting down, miserable but defiant; "there was nowhere I could come but to you."
"Oh, sir," said Elizabeth, "no harm shall happen to you, not a hair shall fall from your head—but spare him, spare him now."
"Spare him! am I harming him? I am giving my life for his," said Roger, with a groan. "I wish he had let me break my neck from the old tower; it would have been soon over. Spare him! I'm on my way now I know not where. Whatever happens to him I am lost, Mrs Murray; my life, my good name, everything. Look here, there is but one thing you can do for me; give me Lily and let me go."
Lily had heard all from her stool by the fire, where she had sat in a dull suspension of feeling, listening vaguely, too much crushed to care for anything. At these words she rose up to her feet, and stood still, rigid, waiting for what was next to be said.
"No," said Dick. "Mother, you could not be so cruel; let him bear his just burden that did it. One should not perish for another. Mother, you would not wish a sacrifice like that?"
"Oh, Dick!" she moaned, wringing her hands, "no harm shall happen to him, not a hair shall fall from his head."
"But that's not all," said Dick, "that's but a little—honour is more than life. Would you let him give up everything because Abel caught him when he was falling? I would do that for any tramp. Mother, you will never be so cruel."
"Look here," said Roger, "I've taken all the money I could lay my hands on; that ought to keep us from starving. Tell Lily to come with me. I've nothing else left in the world. Give me Lily and I will go."
"Lad!" cried Elizabeth, turning to her son with vehement self-defence, "if I give him my Lily—my Lily, as he says——"
"That will not be to give him justice," cried Dick. "Mother, think before you do it—it will never come to good."
"They would murder my lad," said Elizabeth, shivering; "they would take no excuse, they would give no mercy. But when he's better he'll know what to say for himself. They would put the stain of blood on your father's house. We could never be clear of it to the third and fourth generations. But him there, there's no trouble in his soul; he will not suffer like the one who did it. If he was in danger of his life it would be different. I tell you, not a hair of him should be touched; but there's no danger of his life. And if I give him my Lily, as he says——"
This controversy went on swift and low-toned, while the others stood scarcely listening. Roger was full of the excitement of despair; he had been warned that the warrant was out to arrest him and the officers on their way. What could he say against it? There was every proof that he was the man. He had been traced to the fatal spot, he had been seen speeding like a ghost up the hillside afterwards; he had given no alarm; and there had been that fatal quarrel the day before. Every fact was against him, even to a blood-stain on his dress, which he had got unawares as he pushed through the brushwood to see what it was the madman had done. By no way but by giving the madman up could he clear himself. And there was no time to think; all through that day he had fancied that every one shrank from him and avoided him. When the old village constable, whom he had known all his life, ventured to hint at his danger, it seemed to Roger, impetuous and wretched as he was, that there was but one thing for him to do. And he had plunged away through the woods in the twilight as Abel Murray had done before him. He would go if Lily would go with him. To this he made up his mind with the obstinate simplicity of his nature. What was there at home to make him desire to stay? He could neither marry as he liked nor live as he liked. His sister, the only bright thing in the house, was plunged into trouble. There was no comfort wherever he looked. If he had Lily to go with him, he would go.
As for Lily, she stood in a wilder excitement, still feeling her fate in the balance. She did not think of herself as having any choice. She seemed to be suspended between a wild agony of happiness and a dreary abyss of evil. To be raised, giddy, to the height she did not realise, or dropped horribly into the pit below, was an affair of a minute or two. She stood breathless, waiting—with her eyes wavering between her mother and her lover, not knowing what was to be.
"Sir," said Elizabeth, breaking from her son's detaining hold, "you're doing a great thing for me, and I'll do a great thing for you. You'll promise me to wed my Lily? You'll vow to me afore God that she shall be your wife?"
"I promise you before God," said Roger, taking the passive girl by the hand.
"Then take her—take her—before I repent. Oh, go, my lass! go with him and be a good wife to him, and make it up to him, if woman can. Go! afore I repent. I'm buying one child with another," said Elizabeth, lifting up her hands, wild tears bursting from her eyes. "I'm giving a life for a life. Oh, Lord! forgive a poor woman driven out of her senses, for I'm doing a base action. Go, go! afore I repent!"
Roger and Lily left the cottage almost immediately on their extraordinary journey. All that they had was the money which he had got before he started, a considerable sum which happened to be in the house. Elizabeth, on her side, gave Lily everything (it was not much) which was in the cottage, and with a little bundle on her arm the girl went out into the darkness with her new companion. Not even her husband! Lily was dazed, and did not know what she was doing. She scarcely felt the hasty embrace with which her mother put her from the door. In a curious suppressed delirium of excitement and wonder she floated out into the night without any independent action of hers—or at least this was how she felt. Was it her life that she was beginning as she set out over the turf and tremulous bog under that wistful clearness of the sky over which heavy clouds were rolling? Everything was darkness before her eyes, and fear in her heart. They were both young, they had done no evil, they were strong and well and cared nothing for the long walk, and the strange excitement of the moment was indescribable. They said nothing to each other as they walked steadily over the hills, Dick going with them to show them the way. They had nothing but their money, a poor provision, and their youth, and some love for each other, which was altogether in the background now. Had they been married in the natural way, this passion, now but secondary on Roger's part, on hers vague as could be, would have been the chief thing present to their thoughts. As it was they thought nothing of it. Other subjects than this were foremost in their minds. They said nothing to each other, did not even take each other's hands, but with excitement so wild and strange that everything else was dissolved in it, went away together, fugitives, victims—yet also something more.
Dick put them on their way across the hill by a wild mountain path difficult to find for any one who did not know as he did every nook and crevice of the hills. Lily, too, had some knowledge of them, and of the tricks of the atmosphere and elements in these lofty regions. Her brother left them only when the early dawn was breaking over the mountains, and they could see how they were going. There were few words at the leave-taking. Lily let fall a few tears at the renewed farewell, and they parted and went upon their several ways without looking back. She was started now, pushed off dangerously, risking everything, into the surf of the sea of life.
And it is more than words can do to tell the state of mind in which Elizabeth Murray lived for days after; her daughter gone—perhaps for ever—perhaps, for who could trust any man? to sorrow and shame; her son lying, rolling his head from side to side, sometimes violent, and requiring restraint which it was so difficult to know how to use; sometimes lying like a log, in a stupor which nothing could break. She lived on, nevertheless, saying little even to her companion Dick, and went down to the market on Saturday as usual with a brave front, and sold her butter and bore her burden. She stood in the market as she always stood, and asked everything about the murder, and made her criticisms and observations. "It would be some tramp," she said, looking them all in the face. For the young squire, even if it had been in him to strike a sudden blow and kill his adversary, he could never have beaten and crushed him savagely as had been done. She said all this without a change of countenance, for she was a brave woman, and felt that she must not save herself a single detail. She went to Miss Prentice even, and there talked it over again, though the chief end of her visit was to say that she had sent Lily to a cousin's far south, and did not fear but what the change would put her all right. Everybody accepted her explanations with straightforward simplicity as they seemed to be given, for nothing had directed suspicion to her; and nobody supposed it possible that she could have anything to do with it. The old vicar, indeed, looking very old and very anxious, hovered about Elizabeth's place, wistfully looking at her, talking to her, trying to lead her to the subject of her son. But she had never been much disposed to talk commonly of Abel, at least for many years, and fortunately she remembered this, and would not be drawn into conversation about him now. The old vicar was very unhappy. He had repented his disclosure when he saw the unhappy young man rush out disgraced and stung to the heart, and though it never occurred to him nor to any one to connect Murray's disappearance, for which there was such good reason, with the horrible event which had occurred next morning, yet the idea that the unfortunate young fellow had felt the exposure so deeply, gave the old man a grievous pang. Even in the midst of the excitement caused by the murder, he had gone daily to Landale to inquire if any news of their visitor had reached them. What could have happened to him? It might be suicide, for anything they could tell, and in that case, Mr Weston felt he too would be a murderer. "But his mother knows nothing about it," he said to himself, with a sigh of relief. Was it possible that anything of that dreadful kind could have happened and the mother not know?
Meanwhile the Landales had mourned very sincerely over the disappearance of their guest. They packed up the things he had left, his money, his little personal possessions, in a portmanteau, mournfully, as if they had been relics of the dead. He had not been heard of at Oxford. Was it from the depths of the lake that they would have the first news of him? Mrs Landale would not see the vicar when he came. "He has killed him," she said, "as sure as ever poor Roger Ridley killed Richard Featherstonhaugh." And as the months went on and there was nowhere any news of Abel this came to be the general conclusion. What a tragic summer it had been! Old Mr Weston failed visibly Sunday by Sunday after all these events, and died of it also before the winter came.
As to the other tragedy, there were investigations without number. Roger was traced to the place where it was proved he was to have met Featherstonhaugh, and where it was supposed some sequel to the quarrel of the previous night, of which there had been various witnesses, had taken place. He was traced away from the fatal spot, having been met wildly wandering about the hills, haggard and agitated, asking the people he met if they had seen some one running that way. But no one had been seen running that way, and the hypothesis was that this was the explanation he had intended to give had not his courage failed him. But even if this defence had been true, he must have at least seen that a murder had been done: yet gave no alarm. And last of all, and most damning proof of guilt, he had fled. This convicted him with every one. His father, with a groan that rent every heart, after denying the possibility of Roger's flight as long as he could, retired to his library when there was no longer any doubt of it, and shut the door, and was seen by no one, even in his own house, for days. But there was Mary left, whose situation was more pitiful still. No one dared to intrude upon her in her first hours of grief. But she did not attempt to shut herself up. She put on her mourning-dress, as heavy as a widow's, as was due to poor Featherstonhaugh, but never forsook her brother's cause, protesting passionately that he had not done it. The vicar, who would have been a witness on the trial, and who was, indeed, called before the coroner's jury to tell of the quarrel which he had seen, did what he could to bring her, as people said, to see the truth. But Mr Weston could not shake her conviction. "You will all acknowledge it one day," she said, in her passion. "I do not know how, or when, but I am sure he will be cleared." The populace round shook their heads, but were very respectful to Mary, very tender of her in her great misfortune. And another line of Featherstonhaughs, distant cousins, came in, and dispersed Sir Richard's collections, and changed everything he had cared for. Thus one great house was entirely altered, and another made desolate, and the whole face of society changed in Waterdale. And after this great convulsion there was a long silence, and the new things grew natural and became old, as is the law of human affairs.
When years had passed, however, there arose one morning a strange rumour in Waterdale. Some time before it had crept into the knowledge of the country that some madman had escaped from an asylum, no one knew where, and was at large about the neighbourhood. People in lonely places had seen a wild figure passing by, and some had heard strange sounds, peals of horrible laughter, and inarticulate cries. On one occasion Mary Ridley even heard this sound of laughter, and had alarmed the neighbourhood, and sent out all the men in the village to beat the woods, declaring that she knew the sound, and who it was. And next morning a strange story ran like fire over the whole district. It was that a man had been found lying dead in that same tragic spot, which had become memorable far and near, where Sir Richard Featherstonhaugh got his death. The news of this came on a Saturday morning, when Elizabeth Murray was in her place in the market with all her merchandise, carefully arranged as always. She had been looking ill, everybody remarked. When the story came down from the head of the water by one envoy after another, Elizabeth left her stand unprotected and uncared for, and went away. She had lost all her fine colour, and had grown old—older than her years—but nevertheless, she marched steadily up the lakeside till she came to the place where they had carried the vagrant who was dead. Such an event had made a great commotion about, and there was much discussion among the men who clustered round the empty cottage in which the body had been placed. It filled them all with wonder to see Elizabeth come, slowly and silent, but with a death-like countenance, through the midst of them. She went into the room where the dead man lay. Those who had seen him had said that he was "a fine figure of a man," though wasted and savage with exposure, his hands and feet torn with the rough places he had been wandering through, and a long wild beard grown over half his face. She went into the room, shutting out the curious gossips about who came to peep and shrink with curiosity and horror. When she came out she locked the door. "The man who is lying there," she said, giving the key into the hands of the village constable, the same man who had (against his duty—but that was easily condoned in such a place) warned Roger Ridley to flee, "is my lad Abel, my eldest son, that has lost his reason for many a year. The Lord has delivered him at last; but he's not to be made a common show, my lad. I'll come and see to him, and that all's done for him that should be done."
"Your lad?" The wondering little crowd came closer and stared at her, whispering and pointing. "Lord bless us! Lizabeth Murray, your lad?"
"Ay. Is it such a merry sight, the face o' a woman that has lost her firstborn, and that thanks the Lord? Go away to your bairns, you silly women, and let me and him be."
"But, 'Lizabeth, there will be an inquest—there must be an inquest."
"That's true," she said. She was quite calm, and made no show of her feelings, whatever they were. "But, John Johnston, you'll keep them off that come from curiosity, to glower and girn at my lad," she said, with a sudden burst of passion. Then subduing herself in a moment, "Good morning to you all; I've much to do this day," she said.
Old Mr Landale was the nearest magistrate, and to him she went direct, without pause or delay. She was a long time with him, and came out exhausted and pale, but rejecting all the anxious offers of help he made her. "We were all attached to him—all of us," the old gentleman said, attending the peasant woman to the door with still more agitation than Elizabeth showed; and after that Mr Landale convulsed his own household with the strangest news—news that threw the whole valley into such excitement as had never swept over it in the memory of man before.
Six months after, Roger Ridley came home with his wife and children—two of them—one a boy, who was heir to all the family honours, such as they were. But though Mr Ridley forgave and acknowledged his son's family with something like joy, and relief that the honour of his name was restored, there was not much cordiality, as long as he lived, between the old squire and the young squire. The little heir pleased the old man, and recommended the pretty young mother to him; but he never forgave his son the wild generosity which plunged all his family into such grievous trouble. If it was generosity or if it was cowardice, or a false sense of honour, or mere panic in face of a horrible accusation and the network of circumstantial evidence in which he was trapped, no one could decide. But when Roger came home everybody condemned him. It was said on all sides that he would have been acquitted if he had had the strength of mind to stand his trial. "Inever believed it for a moment," every one said; and all kinds of imputations of weakness and cowardice were made against him. From these accusations it is not our place to defend Roger. Who does not feel, looking back upon a great emergency, that he ought to have done differently, and that another time would find him in a very different mind? He had thought so himself a hundred times, after that wonderful night of excitement when he and his bride went over the hills, like Abraham, not knowing where they went. No other lord or squire in all the north country had an experience to fall back upon such as Roger Ridley had. He had lived the strangest life for these years, and he had not approved of himself any more than his father and his neighbours had approved; but to be faithful to the consequences of a false step, even when you perceive it to be false, is something. He came back a sadder if not a wiser man; no longer the gay hero of the countryside, but very serious, taking almost a gloomy view of everything. His old friends said that his wife did not understand him—could not enter into his ways of thinking—and perhaps this was true enough; but the fact was that he had gone beyond himself as much as beyond Lily. And by-and-by he got into parliament as member for the county, which was a great honour, and did his duty perhaps all the better for having been transplanted for a time out of the higher places and the sunshine into the darker shades of life.
As for Lily, she came home a beautiful woman, of so unusual a style of beauty that she reigned henceforward undisputed over the water, no pretty girl of the moment being able to stand before her matured splendour. She had developed other qualities as well—a talent for dress which no one had suspected, and for hospitality and society and lavish expenditure, which took the world by surprise. She behaved quite as she ought to her mother, everybody said, sending the children to see her, and visiting her periodically with much attention. But when Elizabeth died, a year or two after Mr Ridley's return, and Dick, left alone, emigrated, shutting up the little cottage at Overbeck, it was said that Lily showed every symptom of relief. They said she was glad to be relieved from her family in these legitimate and natural ways, and it was only then that she blossomed out into full splendour. If she was perhaps always a little rustic in manner, that was thought to be piquant when she became the leading lady of the county; and by the time her children grew up nobody recollected any longer that once upon a time she had been the village Lily, the daughter of a woman who sold butter in the market. All that is over so long ago.
And Elizabeth Murray sleeps by the side of her son Abel, in the churchyard, as quietly as if he had lived and died among the fells like herself. The anguish and the struggles are only for a time. Peace is the end of all, for all men. And what does it matter now in the silence, that a little while ago there were madness and raving, and such pangs as overpowered nature, in these two mouldering forms? Time and Death tranquillise all.
John Percival was a nephew of a banker in Edinburgh, destined from his childhood to the service of the bank—which was considered by all the family the greatest good luck that could have happened to a boy. His uncle, who like the boy was John Percival, and who was his godfather—or namefather, as we say in Scotland—as well as his uncle and his patron, and was connected with him by every possible tie, was a childless man: childless, too, in the most secure way,—not an old bachelor who might marry at any moment, but a staid married man with a wife younger than himself, yet not so young as to be dangerous. He was, though the old man did not say so, nor do anything to raise expectations, universally considered as his uncle's heir; and did so consider himself calmly, without impatience or preoccupation with the subject, and very far from wishing to shorten his uncle's life by a single day. He was thought the most fortunate boy in the family; but I don't think he considered himself as such, and especially when he set out on a wintry day at noon in the stage-coach for Duntrum, a large provincial town in the south of Scotland. It may be divined that it was not to-day or yesterday, according to the popular phrase, when this journey took place: for nowadays one whisks off from Edinburgh to Duntrum in the morning, and whisks back again at night, having several hours in which to do one's business between, and no fatigue to speak of. It was very different in those days, when from noon to nearly midnight the coach joggled over the frost-bound country; and even in his corner in the interior, where John was forced to place himself by the anxieties of his elders, who kept up a pleasing fiction that he was delicate—it was very difficult even under a pile of plaids and topcoats to keep warm. He was going to serve for a year in the bank at Duntrum to give him a knowledge of country business and the ways of rustic depositors and clients,—a knowledge which John felt to be very unnecessary, seeing that his life was to be spent, not in Duntrum, but in Edinburgh, and at the least in the manager's office, not at the counter selling money as if it were tea or sugar. He did not like this change of scene at all, perhaps because the season was at its height in Edinburgh, and all the entertainments of the year hurrying upon each other; but chiefly because it was the sordid side of business, the lower part of the profession, as this foolish young man thought, which he was being sent to study. He did not appreciate the advantage of knowing everything connected with his trade, which the elders know so much better than the young people. Indeed, to tell the truth, he was not sure at all that he was fond of banking, or thought it every way so superior an employment as many people thought. His own opinion was that if he were left at peace to live upon his own little bit of money, and pursue his own tastes, he would be a much happier man. He had a notion, indeed, that he might possibly turn out a great painter or a great writer if he were thus left to himself to cultivate the best that was in him. It was a pity that he felt the possibilities were equal in respect to these two pursuits. It might be either which would bring him fame and fortune, but certainly one of them. If he had been sure that it was either this or that, there would have been more hope for John: but he was not sure,—he thought at one time he could have been a painter, had he time and encouragement to try, and then again another time that he could be a novelist or a poet. Perhaps on the whole it was just as well for him, that, with such excellent prospects, and the certainty of coming to a good end, if he behaved himself, he should have been what he was—a banker's clerk.
But whatever it might end in eventually, it was very hard lines, he thought, that he should have to leave Edinburgh in the middle of the season when everything was in full swing. There was not much in those days, at least not the tenth part so much as now, of football and golf. These games were played, but they were not the essence of life. Strange to say, young men found other things to talk about, other things to occupy them which were not all deleterious. For one thing, they took a great deal more interest in dances and all sorts of assemblies, in which the boys met with the girls of their own class, than the ordinary run of "manly young fellows" do now. I suspect they fell in love much more freely than they do now. They wanted to meet, to talk to, to laugh with these girls, as they like now to make themselves comfortable in a smoking-room, or rave about breaking a record on the links. I do not say which is best, not knowing; but at least one must confess that it is quite different. It is possible that John had even more than one incipient flirtation on his hands. He did not at all like to leave, for a hum-drum provincial town near the Border, with all its local questions and prejudices which he would not understand, the cheerful bustle of Edinburgh, the gay assemblies and all the private entertainments that abounded at this cheerful time of the year.
"Good-bye, my boy: we'll see you back whenever there's anything great going on," said one of the friends who were seeing him off. There was a little group of them round the coach door, bright-faced young men who had made a dart from the offices of several Writers to the Signet, or even from the Parliament House—to see the last of Percival, as they said.
"Perhaps," said John, with satirical bitterness, "if well-founded information reaches the bank that the world is coming to an end."
"In that case you may stay where you are," said the other; "we'll have enough to do thinking of ourselves. Hallo!" said this young man, feeling himself vigorously pushed aside from the coach door. This was the arrival of another passenger, by whom the group of young men were pushed aside to right and left by that free use of elbows and personal momentum which an energetic woman of the lower orders uses with so little scruple. This was a strong and vigorous maid-servant of middle age and weighty person, leading a veiled and muffled personage who followed her closely, and who bore the aspect of an old lady afflicted with toothache or "tic," or one of those affections of the face which were then treated freely with enveloping wraps to keep out the cold, and external applications, and a total indifference to personal appearance. Indeed in this case, as the face was entirely invisible, a thick veil of Spanish lace, in a large pattern of heavy and close design, covering the small amount which was not entirely obliterated by plaster and poultice applied to the right cheek, there was not perhaps any inducement even to undying vanity to attempt modification or concealment. The identity of the veiled person it was quite impossible to divine—her wrapped-up head was like a melon, a "sport" with one great bulge on the right side: a faint glimmer of an eye between the crevices of the lace pattern, a little colour, was all that was apparent; feature and form and expression were all lost in the portentous envelopments. She clung close to her protector with old and tremulous steps, and occasionally a faint waggle of the misshapen and enormous head.
"Can ye no' see it's an auld leddy with the rheumatics in her head—and jist you get out of the way, my fine callants, that kenna what trouble is. Gang round to the other side of the coach if you have any more blethers to say. Steady, mem, steady! take your time, this is the town corner, the furdest frae the winds: and I'll pull up the window-glass, and ye'll not feel a breath. You'll jist be as safe as gin ye were in your auld chair with the wings at hame."
During this speech, to which the young men listened awestruck, the old lady was carefully and with much precaution hoisted into the coach, a process which seemed more difficult than her short stature and apparently insignificant figure seemed to justify, the stout woman-servant growing redder and redder under the strain, although assisted by a porter who pushed from behind. When the process was accomplished the boys burst into a genial but suppressed laugh, with significant looks at John, who for his part could not but regard with a certain fascination the mass of nodding headgear which was to be his companion in the long drive. He could not take his gaze from her. The cold journey to Duntrum, leaving dinners and assemblies behind, was reason enough for despondency: but to travel with Medusa herself in a mail-coach! if by any chance the wrappings might come off, and her unfortunate fellow-passenger be turned to stone.
"I give you joy, Jack," whispered one of the attendant youths; "here's a bonny bride to bear you company."
"I'll tell May Laurie you were in capital fettle; a fair lady by your side and plenty of time to make your court."
"Nothing of the sort, Jack, my lad; I'll let her know you were preserved from every temptation," cried another—all this in not quite inaudible whispers, at the other door.
John was glad when the coach finally started, leaving all these laughing faces behind; for he had a tender heart, and was remorseful at the thought of perhaps wounding an old and suffering person for whom he had on the contrary the greatest compassion. True, it was dreadful to see that misshapen head nodding from the opposite corner, and to know that whatever happened he must be its companion for so many hours. A horrible doubt seized him whether it would be possible for her to go so far without occasion to change her poultice or undo her cerements. He thought of the 'Veiled Prophet,' then just published, and wondered whether he might not have some ghastly revelation to undergo like that of the horrified hero. He thought in spite of himself of ill-smelling ointments and other sickening appliances. Poor creature! it might be a question with her of ease from distracting pain, or she might go on suffering, unwilling to expose her inflamed cheek, or run the risk of disgusting her companion. Poor old body! John tried to turn his back on her, to keep his eyes diverted on the view from the opposite window: but there was a fascination in the unknown which drew him back. He stole glances at her against his will, as if she had been a young beauty. He would have given much to see what was underneath the thick silken flowers of the veil, even though he was sure it would be chiefly poultices bound up with white-and-black handkerchiefs. These modes of wrappings were visible sometimes on Edinburgh streets as they are on those of Paris to-day. It would not be a pleasant sight: still it would be better than the mystery in the corner which sat there, like an image of stone, never showing any sign of life but by the occasional nodding of the distorted head. Was it palsy too, poor soul? had she all the ills that flesh is heir to? John was very sympathetic. The sight of that wrapped-up mass of suffering in the corner affected him very much. He would fain have done something to show his pity. He began to calculate how he should manage to help her out when the coach came to its first stopping-place to change horses and to afford the passengers an opportunity for "a snack." Probably she would not be able to take a snack or exert her suffering jaws. He thought perhaps he might got her some broth, which would give her no trouble except the trouble of undoing her veil. Broth was always to be had in a Scotch village about dinner-time. It would warm and comfort her, and perhaps even she could take it without undoing anything. He had a horrible desire to see the coverings undone, and yet he had so kind a heart that he would have been glad to think she could take a little broth without any trouble in that way, poor old soul!
However, he did his best to read his book for an hour or two, turning his mind from the lady in the corner. He would be out of temptation those fellows said. Well, yes, he was out of temptation in one way: but if his fellow-traveller had only been a moderately well-looking woman, even though young and responsive, he did not know that he would have been so much in temptation as with this mystery in the opposite corner, though he felt sure it was a repulsive mystery, and probably would have a sickening, and not an enticing, effect upon him. But he said to himself he would just like to know what it was. Poor thing! perhaps it was a dreadful embarrassment to her to find a man opposite to her, to be hampered in any effort to relieve herself which she might have made if alone. He could see that she pressed herself more and more into the corner, and leaned the weight of her poor head on the cushions. By degrees it occurred to him that he might make her more comfortable if she would allow him to make a roll of one of his plaids and put it at the place where no doubt her neck came, so that she could support her head more comfortably. He pondered over this a long time, and experimented on himself how he could do it, before, with much timidity and as fine a blush as if he had been aiding a beautiful princess, he at last ventured to speak.
"The cushions," he said, "are not very soft in these coaches."
The melon with the bulging side turned round to him with a swiftness he could not have thought possible, but nothing was said.
"I've been thinking," said John, "I've seen it done in—in my own family. You see, you roll up a thing like a small bolster, and then you place it just where your neck comes——"
He exemplified what he meant by rolling up a large comforter knitted in dazzling white wool, quite new and of his Aunt John's choicest manufacture, made expressly for this journey. It was large and soft, and John rolled it close till it became as round and smooth as a bolster, according to his homely simile.
"If you will let me," he said, rising, "I think I could place this——"
There was an agitated movement inside the draperies, and a voice that made John jump, between a squeak and a scream, came as it seemed out of the top of the misshapen head, "No! no! I cannot be touched. No! no!"
It made John jump; but after all, what was a voice any more than the other appearances, to daunt him when he had so honest an intention of doing well? He came a step nearer. "I am sure you will find it more——"
"No; keep away! No; keep away!" the voice repeated with shrill decision, not at all softened but made still more bewildering by a sudden tremor at the end. He paused for a moment with his white roll in his hand, and he distinctly saw the veiled figure shake with a strange sort of broken vibration, as if in one access after another of palsy, was it? or, if not, what else? He did not know what else it could be. He stood for a moment wavering, and then he retired and threw down the comforter impatiently upon the seat. "Well," he said, with a sigh also of impatience, "if you won't have it I cannot help it: still I am sure I could have made you more comfortable," he added, recovering his good-humour. And he resumed his book: but his attention was sadly distracted, for that spasmodic movement went on at intervals; and there even broke forth certain stifled sounds—was it moaning, was it the signal of some approaching calamity? He gazed earnestly over the top of his book, with a most compassionate face, and held himself on the alert to give any aid he could. But after a while his apprehensions were quieted: there seemed no reason to suppose that anything was going to happen, and these mysterious movements died away.
The lady, however, refused the broth which he procured for her when they stopped, at the risk of having no time for his own "snack." She rejected it with the same sharp squeaking voice as before, and with something of the same strangely convulsive movements,—darting away from her corner, when he suddenly opened the door at her side, with a swiftness which it was impossible to suppose such a wrapped-up mummy could be capable of, and an evident fright which piqued him a little. "No; keep away!" she squeaked again. What a cankered, sour, shrill, old woman! What did she suppose he wanted with her? It was not for herbeaux yeuxcertainly. But he had heard that some women always, however old and ugly they may be, imagine a man wants to make love to them. He laughed at this to himself as he went off to get his "snack," and as ten minutes with a powerful young appetite can do a great deal, succeeded fully in indemnifying himself. For the moment he was vexed with this second repulse; but no such feeling had long the mastery in John's honest bosom. There were some fine golden oranges on the table, and he put two or three into his pocket before he went back to the coach. Perhaps she might like one in the dark hours that were coming before they reached Duntrum, when there would be no light to see by, whatever faces she might make, if she put aside the veil. He put two of them gently on the seat beside her when he returned to the coach: but the mummy only gave a grotesque fling farther back into her corner, and took no notice. Yet once again John made an attempt to be of service to her. It was when the guard, as they passed through the small town of Dunscore, as the evening fell, opened the door hurriedly and flung in a bundle of post-bags, two or three attached to each other with a strap, their metal padlocks shining in the glow of his lantern. "Last stage afore Duntrum," said the guard. It was his habit to place the mails there at this point of his journey, in order to give them up to the Duntrum authorities without delay.