CHAPTER LII.THE SHEEP-FARMER AND HIS WIFE.
I left the rock which had sheltered me, and went in search of Cora, resolved at once to expose the perfidy so cruelly enforced upon me. I found her sitting drearily beneath the larches. At my approach she lifted her head with a look of sullen apprehension, as if she dreaded further importunity. I was terribly excited, and breathless, and doubtless pale. It was impossible for me to begin my painful subject with delicacy or caution.
“Cora,” I said, “Cora, I have seen him—he is a wretch—he is infamous!”
“Seen him!—seen him! when? where?” she cried, looking wildly around.
“Yonder,” said I, almost lifting her from the earth and dragging her forward to a point from whence the boat could be seen close by the opposite shore; “yonder he goes; I have been pleading with him in your behalf. I besought him not to leave you with this terrible reproach on your name.”
“Well, well,” she gasped.
“He refused—he spoke of you as a person whom he could not respect.”
“No—no! not that! not that!” she almost shrieked, clenching her hands together.
“Worse, Cora, worse—he dared to offer his love to me—his vile, traitorous love. Before this he has done the same thing; but now it was more direct, more passionate. He offered to brave Lady Catherine, and break all ties for my sake, this very day.”
I paused in this headlong speech; my words had turned herto marble. She stood thus white and rigid for a moment, then, like a statue hurled from its support fell prone upon the earth; her face downward and clutching the turf with both hands.
I shrieked and fell back from her in dismay, startled by the suddenness of her fall.
She remained still, and but for a faint quivering of her fingers in the grass, I should have believed that she had dropped down dead.
“Cora!” I cried, “Cora, my poor Cora, are you hurt?”
I bent down and attempted to lift her from the earth, but she shrunk from me moaning and shuddering. This repulse was not enough, I wound my arm around her and covered her golden hair with my kisses.
“Don’t—don’t, your kisses sting me! I would rather have vipers creeping through my hair!”
Wounded by her words, I desisted and drew back. After a little she moved, and I saw her face. It was pallid and stony; her eyes were heavy, and a violet tinge lay beneath them. A look of touching grief impressed that child-like mouth, which began to quiver as her eyes met mine.
“What?—what have I done, Cora?” was my tearful question, for the anguish in those sweet eyes filled me with unutterable dismay.
“I heard all that you said—all, every word!” she answered, laying her head helplessly down on the grass again. “Every word, Zana! You never told me a falsehood in your life, but I must not believe this; it would kill me here, at your feet.”
My heart sunk. She knew how worthless he was now, when knowledge was despair. We had been rivals before she became a victim, that she knew also. No wonder she shuddered when I touched her—no wonder those sweet features were pallid, and those white fingers sought to work off the agony of her soul by tearing the senseless turf.
“Cora,” I said, full of the most tender compassion, “I have done you no wrong, and never will. Since the day I was surethat you loved him, I have never willingly been in his presence. Is this no sacrifice, Cora?”
“Then you did love him once?” she said, looking up, as if surprised. “No wonder, who could help it. But he, Zana, Zana, it kills me to think of that—heloves you; and I—I, O my God—my God, what have I done?”
She began to cry, and for a time her form was convulsed with tears. I, too, wept, for the same hand had stricken us both. When this storm of sorrow had passed, she lay quite passive and inert upon the grass, a single tear now and then forcing itself through her thick lashes, and a quiver stirring her lips as we witness in a grieved child.
During some minutes we remained thus, when she arose and began to arrange her hair, sitting on the ground, but her hands trembled, and the tresses fell away from them. I sat down by her and smoothed the heavy masses with my hand. She leaned toward me, sobbing.
“It does not feel like a viper, now, Cora!” I whispered.
She threw herself into my arms.
“Oh, Zana, Zana, what shall I do? What will become of me?”
I folded her in my arms, and kissed the quivering whiteness of her forehead, till it became smooth again.
“Come with me, love—come to the good father who is pining to death for a sight of his darling.”
“Yes, I will go, Zana. I will never seehimagain—never, never. Oh, God help me—never!”
I could not avoid a throb of selfish joy as she said this; but grateful and relieved folded her closer in my arms.
“Come now,” she said, struggling to her feet; “take me away. Let him go to the house and find the room empty, perhaps—perhaps that will make him feel.”
She began to weep afresh, and fearing that she would sink to the earth again, I cast my arm around her. “Let me help support you, Cora.”
“Yes, yes, for I am a feeble creature, Zana, but stronger in some points than you think!”
We moved on through the larch groves, uttering broken sentences like these, half tears, half exclamations, till a sudden curve brought us close to Chaleco. His sylvan meal was ready, but neither of us could partake a morsel of it. With natural tact he did not urge us, but observed everything, doubtless making his own comments. We entered the boat, and without asking a question the gipsy rowed us toward the opposite shore.
We ascended to the house, and conducted Cora at once to her room. All she asked was darkness and solitude. I had seen her on the bed, passive and worn out with the storm of sorrow that had swept over her. Chaleco joined me in the next room.
“Let her sleep if she can,” he said; “you and I must go in yonder; we have some questions to ask of the old people.”
Chaleco took me to the kitchen. An old woman was on the hearth, spinning flax; and at a back door where the sun lay warmly, sat a stout old man smoking. I had not seen, or more probably not observed this couple before, but now they struck me as familiar, like persons lost sight of from childhood. Chaleco went out and sat down by the old man, while I drew toward the woman, and asked some questions regarding her work. She gave a little start, looked up, and evidently disappointed, began fumbling in her pocket for a pair of horn spectacles, which were eagerly placed across her nose.
Never did I undergo a perusal of the face like that. It seemed to me that the grey eyes under those glasses grew keen and large as they gazed. At length she started up, breaking the thread from her distaff, and hurried toward the back door with every appearance of affright.
“Guidman—guidman, coom here,” she said, “coom and see the young gipsy leddy! As God is above all, she is here, body and soul!”
“Gang awa, woman, these new fangled barnacles are deceiving things. Ye dinna see as ye did,” answered the old man,deliberately knocking the ashes from his pipe, by tapping the bowl on his thumb nail.
“Well, then, look for yoursel, guidman,” said the dame, taking me by the shoulders, and half pushing me toward the door.
When the old man’s eyes fell on my person he stood up and dropped his bonnet.
“A weel, a weel!” he exclaimed, “wonders will never cease; na dout it’s the leddy hersel with hardly a year on her heed sin she went, years sine, with the bairn in her arms.” Then turning to Chaleco, he said, “Ye wer speerin about the stranger leddy; there she stans.”
“But the lady you speak of would have been older than this,” said Chaleco.
“It’s just the truth,” answered the Scotchman, sinking on his bench, “seventeen years wad na ha left her sa bonny, whil mysel an the guid wife ha sunk fra hale, middle-aged folk inta owld grey carlins—but then wha may the lassie be?”
“You spoke of a child!”
“Aye, gude faith, it’s the bairn grown to be what the mither was. Weel, weel, time maun ha it’s ain—but wha may be the ladie hersel? A-whow is it sae, an she sa bonny?”
“You remember her well then?” persisted Chaleco.
“Mind her, wherefore no what sud gin me forget her, or her gowden haired guidman, a bonnier pair n’er staid in shoon. It wad be na easy matter to forget them, I tell ye!”
“Then they were married?”
“Wha iver cud doubt it, and their bairn born here?” cried the staunch old man, proudly; “d’ye think we harbor lemans? There was guid reason why it sud na be clash’d about; na doot the Earl of Clare was na ane to put shame on an honest man’s name.”
“Then he told you that he was married to the lady?”
“Tell me, yes; wha but himself sud tell me?”
“And you will swear to this?” questioned Chaleco, allowing none of the eagerness that burned in his eyes to affect his voice.
“Swear, d’ye think I wad say at any time in my life what I wad na swear till?”
“And the lady—what did you call her name?”
“Aurora; it’s a strange name, but my lard said it had a fine meanin, something about the dawn o’ the day.”
“Yes—yes, it was a pretty name—but when together how did they seem? Was he in the habit of calling her his wife? Did she call him husband?”
“Aye—aye, baith him an her; she, puir thing, took great delight i’ the name.”
“Then you knew this man to be Lord Clare? Had you seen him often before?”
“Seen him? wha else learned him to shoot o’ the hills and fish i’ the loch yonder?”
“And you would know this girl by your memory of her mother?”
“Sud I ken the lassie by mother’s look, d’ye speer?—sud I ken my ain bairn, think ye? The twa are as like as twa pease—the same blink o’ the ee—hair like the wing o’ the raven—a step like the mountain deer. Aye—aye, I ken her weel.”
I drew near to the old man, impatient to learn more of my parents, and was about to interrupt him with questions; but Chaleco promptly repelled me with a motion of the hand, giving a warning look which I dared not disregard.
Too much excited for a passive listener, I left them and entered Cora’s sitting room. This little chamber had a double interest to me now. It was doubtless the place of my birth. The furniture and ornaments so superior to the dwelling itself had been my mother’s. I stood by the window looking upon the lake which had filled her vision so many times. Sad thoughts crowded upon me as I walked to and fro in the room, determined not to interrupt Chaleco with my impatience, and yet panting to hear all those old people had to say of my parents. Directly Chaleco and the old people came in, and once more the closet containing those precious books was searched. A few letters from Lord Clare to my mother, were found;Chaleco seized them eagerly, and sat down to compare them with my mother’s journal, which he had never restored to me.