“Si che a bene sperar m’era cagioneDi quella fera alla gaietta pelleL’ora del tempo, e la dolce stagione.”
“Si che a bene sperar m’era cagioneDi quella fera alla gaietta pelleL’ora del tempo, e la dolce stagione.”
“Si che a bene sperar m’era cagioneDi quella fera alla gaietta pelleL’ora del tempo, e la dolce stagione.”
The trees seemed to sweep with a great luxuriance of shadow over a broad stretch of country. It must be possible to find some refuge there. There might be—a hermit, perhaps, in a little cell, who would give them nuts and some milk from his goat—or a charcoal burner, wild but kind, like those Lilias remembered to have seen in the forest with wild locks hanging over their eyes. If only no magician should be there to beguile them into his den, pretending to be kind! Thus Lilias mixed fact and fiction, her own broken remembrances of Italian woods sounding as fictitious among the English elms and beeches as the wildest visions of fancy. For this wood, though it had poetic corners in it, was traversed by the highroad, from end to end, and was as innocent of charcoal-burners as of magicians. And it turned out a great deal further off than they thought. They walked and walked, and still it lay before them, smiling in itsyellow and red, waving and beckoning in the breeze, which was less chilly now that the sun was up. The sun reached to the footpath behind the hedge, and warmed the little wayfarers through and through—that was the best thing that had happened to them—for how good it is to be warmed when one is chilled and weary; and what a rising of hope and courage there is when the misty dawn disperses before the rising of the brave sun!
Nello almost recovered his spirits when he got within the wood. There were side-aisles even to the highroad, and deep corners in its depths where shelter could be had, and the ground was all flaked with shadow and sunshine; and there were green glades, half visible at every side, with warm grass all lit by the sun.
“Let us go and sit down, Lily. Oh, what a pretty place to sit down! Oh, Lily, I cannot—I cannot walk any more; I am so tired,” cried Nello.
“I am tired too,” she said, with a quiver in her mouth, looking vainly round for some trace of the charcoal-burner or of the hermit. All was silent, sunny, fresh with the morning, but vacant as the fields. And Lilias could not be satisfied with mere rest, though she wanted it so much. “How are we to get home, if we dare not go to the railway? and there is no other way,” she said. “Oh, Nello, it will be very nice to rest—but how are we to get home?”
“Oh, never mind; I am so tired,” said weary little Nello. “Look, Lily, what a warm place. It is quite dry, and a tree to lean against. Let us stay here.”
Never had a more tempting spot been seen; green soft turf at one side of the big tree, and beech-mast, soft and dry and brown, the droppings of the trees, on the other. The foot sank in it, it was so soft, and the early sun had dried it, and the thick boughs overhead had kept off the dew. It was as soft as a bed of velvet, and the little branches waved softly over it, while the greater boughs, more still, shaded and protected the children. They sat down, utterly worn out, and Lilias took out her cakes, which they ate together with delight, though these dainties were far from delicious; and there, propped up against each other, an arm of each round the other, Nello lying across Lilias’ lap, withhis head pillowed upon her; she, half-seated, half-reclining, holding him, and held in her turn by a hollow of the tree: these babes in the wood first nodded, then dozed, and woke and dozed again, and finally, the yellow leaves dropping now and then upon them like a caress of nature, the sun cherishing their little limbs, fell fast asleep in the guardianship of God.
Nobodyin the sick-room said a word of the great consternation and wonder and fear that sprang to life in them at the appearance of the stranger. How could they, though their hearts were full of it? when all their care and skill were wanted for the patient, who, half-conscious, struggled with them to raise himself, to get out of bed. To find out what he wanted, to satisfy the hazy anxiety in his mind, and do for him the something, whatever it was, that he was so anxious to do, was the first necessity of the moment, notwithstanding the new excitement which was wild in their veins. Where did he come from? How had he got here?—familiar, unmistakable, as if he had been absent but a day. How did he know he was wanted? And was it he—reallyhe—after all those dreary years? These questions surged through the minds of all the bystanders, in an impetuous, yet secondary current. The first thing, and the most urgent, was the Squire. Brother and sister, friend and friend, had not leisure to take each other by the hand, or say a word of greeting.
Mary and her newly-arrived assistant stood side by side, touching each other, but could not speak or make even a sign of mutual recognition.Hetook her place in supporting, and at the same time, restraining the patient.Sheheld her father’s hand, with which he seemed to be appealing to some one, or using, in dumb show, to aid some argument.
“The little boy,” he said, hoarsely, “bring me the little boy.”
“Is it Nello he means?” the stranger asked, in a low voice.
“I—think so—I—suppose so,” said Mary, trembling, and wholly overcome by this strange ease and familiarity, and even by the sound of the voice so long silent in this place. But he took no notice—only followed his question by another.
“Why not bring the child then? That might satisfy him. Does he care for the child, or is it only a fancy, a wandering in his head? Anyhow, let them bring him. It might be of some use.”
“Do you think he—knows? Do you think he understands—and—means what he is saying?”
Mary faltered forth these words, scarcely knowing what she said, feeling that she could not explain how it was that Nello was not near—and finding it so strange, so strange to be talking thus to—John; could it be really John? After all that had sundered them, after the miseries that had passed over him, the price still set upon his head, was it he who stood so quietly, assuming his household place, taking his part in the nursing of the old man? She could not believe her senses, and how could she talk to him, calmly as the circumstances required, gently and steadily, as if he had never been away?
“Most likely not,” he said; “but something has excited his fancy, and the sight of my boy might calm it. Let some one bring Nello.”
He spoke with the air of one used to be obeyed, and whom also in this particular it would be easy to obey.
“We sent him to school. I am very sorry—I was against it,” said Mary, trembling more and more.
Mr. Pen was frightened too. It is one thing doing “for the best” with a little unprotected parentless child, and quite a different thing to answer the child’s father when he comes and asks for it. Mr. Pen paled and reddened ten times in a minute. He added, faltering—
“It was by my advice—John. I thought it was the best thing for him. You see I did not know—— ”
Here he broke off abruptly, in the confusion of his mind.
“Then it is needless saying any more,” said the stranger, hastily, with a tone in which a little sharpness of personal disappointment and vexation seemed to mingle.
This conversation had been in an undertone, as attendants in a sick-room communicate with each other, without intermitting their special services to the patient. The Squire had been still in their hands for the moment, ceasing to struggle, apparently caught in some dim confused way by the sound of their voices. He looked about him confusedly, like a blind man, turning his head slightly, as if his powers were being restored to him, to the side on which John stood. A gleam of half-meaning, of interest, and wavering, half-roused attention, seemed to come over his face. Then he sank back gently on his pillows, struggling no longer. The paroxysm was over. The nurse withdrew her hand with a sigh of relief.
“Now,” she said, “if we leave him perfectly quiet, he may get some sleep. I will call you in a moment if there is any change.”
The woman saw, with her experienced eyes, that something more than could be read on the surface was in this family combination. She put them gently from the bedside, and shaded the patient’s eyes from the light, for it was nearly noon by this time, and everything was brilliant outside. The corridor, however, into which they passed outside was still dark, as it was always, the glimmering pale reflections in the wainscot of the long narrow window on the staircase being its sole communication with the day.
Mary put out her hands to her brother as they emerged from the sick-room.
“Is it you—you, John?”
“Yes,” he said, grasping them, “it is I. I do not wonder you are startled—I heard my father was worse—that there was a change—and came in without warning. So Nello has been sent away? May I see my little girl? You have been good to her, I am sure, Mary.”
“I love her,” said Mary, hastily, “as if she were my own. John, do not take my little companion away.”
He had been grave enough, and but little moved hitherto bythe meeting, which was not so strange or unlooked-for to him as to them. Now his countenance beamed suddenly, lighting all over, and a tender moisture came to his eyes.
“It is what I have desired most for her,” he said, and took his sister’s hands again and kissed her cheek. “But send for my little Lily,” he added, with an indescribable softening in his voice.
Here Miss Brown, who had been following, came out from the dusk of the room behind. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I did not like to tell you in your trouble; but I’m very uneasy about Miss Lily.”
“Has she never come in yet? You said she had gone out for a walk.”
“I said whatever I could think of to save you, Miss Mary. We none of us know where she’s gone. I’ve sent everywhere. She is not at the Vicarage, nor she’s not at the village; and—oh, what will Mr. John think of us?” cried the woman in tears. “Not one in the house has seen her since yesterday, and Martuccia, she’s breaking her heart. She says Miss Lily has gone after her brother; she says—— ”
“Is Martuccia here?”
“Yes, sir,” said Miss Brown, with a curtsey. She could not take her eyes off him, as she afterwards said. More serious, far more serious than when he was a young gentleman always about the house, but the same man—still the same man.
“Then send her to me at once. It is you, Martha, the same as ever,” he said, with a momentary smile in the midst of his anxiety. Just as Mr. John used to do—always a kind word for everybody and a smile. She made him another curtsey, crying and smiling together.
“And glad, glad, sir, to see you come home,” she said. There was this excuse for Miss Brown’s lingering, that Mary had rushed off at once to find Martuccia. John bowed his head gravely. He had grown very serious. The habit of smiling was no longer his grand characteristic. He went downstairs into the library, the nearest sitting-room in his way, the door of which was standing open. Eastwood was there lingering about, pretending to put things in order, but in reality waiting for news of the oldSquire. Eastwood knew that he had not let this man in. He had not got admission in any legitimate way. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he began, not altogether respectfully, with the intention of demanding what he did there.
“What?” said the stranger, looking up with a little impatience.
Eastwood drew back with another “Beg your pardon, sir!” and his tone was changed. He did not know who it was, but he dared not say anything more. This was the strangest house in the world surely, full of suspicions, full of new people who did not come in at the front door.
When Martuccia came, her story, which, had been almost inarticulate in her broken English, flowed forth volubly enough to her master, whom she recognized with a shriek of delight. She gave him a clear enough account of what had happened. How an old woman had come, a peasant of the country, and told Miss Lily that her little brother was introuble. This word she transferred to her narrative without attempting to translate it, so that Mary, standing by, who did not understand the rest, seemed to hear nothing but this word recurring again and again. “Trouble!” it was an ominous word. Nothing but trouble seemed to surround them. She stood and listened anxiously, though she did not understand.
“It is clear, then,” said her brother, turning to her, “that Lily has gone after her little brother, supposed to be in some mysterious trouble. When did he go, and where did he go, and who persuaded you to send him away?”
“It was Randolph—Randolph has been here. I believe he wanted to be kind. He said Nello was being ruined here, and so did Mr. Pen. It was against my will—against my wish.”
“Randolph!” he said. This alarmed him more than all the rest. “Both my children! I thought I should find them safe—happy in your hands, whatever happened to me—— ”
“Oh John, what can I say?” cried Mary, wringing her hands. No one could be more guiltless of any unkind intention, but, as was natural, it was she who bore the blame. A man may be pardoned if he is a little unjust in such circumstances. John was ready to rush out of the house again directly to go after his children, but what could be done unless the railway helped him?Mary got the time-tables and consulted them anxiously; and Mr. Pen came in and stood by; very serious and a little crestfallen, as one of the authors of the blunder. And it was found, as so often happens, that nothing was to be done at the moment. The early train was going off as they talked, the next did not go till the evening, the same by which Lilias had travelled on the night before. And in the mean time, what might be happening to the little girl, who was wandering about the world in search of her brother? While the brother and sister consulted, Mr. Pen looked sorrowfully over their heads, which were bent over these time-tables. He did not himself pretend to understand these lines of mysterious figures. He looked from one face to another to read what they meant. He was too much abashed by his own share in the misfortune to put forward his advice. But when he saw that they were both at their wits’ end, Mr. Pen suggested that the place where Nello was was nearer to Randolph than to themselves, and that he might get there that night if he was informed at once, and give them news, at least let them know whether Lilias had reached the house where her brother was. “And I will go by the first train,” Mr. Pen said timidly. “Let me go, as I have had a hand in it. John knows I could not mean any harm to his boy——.”
Nobody had meant any harm, but the fact that the two children were both gone, and one, a girl like Lilias, wandering by herself no one knew where, was as bad as if they had meant it a hundred times over. Who could it be who had beguiled her with this story of Nello’s trouble? If John, who had suffered so much, and who had come from the country where feuds and vengeance still flourish, suspected an enemy in it, suspected even his brother who had never been his friend, who could wonder? They telegraphed to Randolph, and to Mr. Swan, and to the stations on the way, John himself hurrying to Pennington to do so. And then when all this was done, which made an exciting bustle for a moment, there was nothing further possible but to wait till evening for the train. Such pauses are due to the very speed and superior possibilities of modern life. A post-chaise was slower than the railway, but it could be had at once, and those long and dreary hours of delay, of time which onefeels to be lost, and in which, while we wait, anything fatal may happen, are the reverse side of the medal, the attendant disadvantage upon headlong speed and annihilation of distance. What a miserable house it was during all that eternal day! Anxieties of every kind filled their minds—those which concerned life and the living coming uppermost and shutting out the solemn interest of the chamber over which death had been hovering. The Squire slept, but only his nurse, unmoved in professional calm, watched over him; and when he woke, still wrapped in a mist and haze of half-consciousness which subdued all his being, yet with an aspect less deathlike, Mary came and went to and from his room, in an enforced stillness almost beyond bearing, not daring to stay long in one place lest she should betray herself. She dared not allow herself to think of little Lilias, perhaps in evil hands, perhaps wandering alone. Her little Lily! Mary felt it would be impossible to sit still, impossible to endure at all if she did not thrust away this thought. A little woman-child, at that tender age, too young for self-protection, too old for absolute impunity from harm. Mary clasped her hands tightly together and forced her thoughts into another channel. There was no lack indeed of other channels for her anxieties; her father thus lying between life and death, and her brother with all the penalties of old on his head, going and coming without concealment, without even an attempt to disguise himself. It would have been better even for John, Mary felt instinctively, if the Squire had been visibly dying instead of rallying. What if he should wake again to full consciousness, and order the doors of his house to be closed against his son as he had done before? What if, seeing this, and seeing him there without attempt at concealment, rejected by his own family, the old prosecution should be revived and John taken? After that—But Mary shuddered and dropped this thread of thought also. The other, even the other was less terrible. Thus passed this miserable day.
Randolph had been alarmed even before the family were, though in a different fashion. Almost as soon as he had seated himself at his respectable clergymanly breakfast-table, after prayers and all due offices of the morning, a telegram was putinto his hand. This made his pulse beat quicker, and he called to his wife to listen, while a whole phantasmagoria of possibilities seemed to rise like a haze about the yellow envelope, ugliest of inclosures. What could it be but his father’s death that was thus intimated to him—an event which must have such important issues? When he had read it, however, he threw it on the table with an impatient “Pshaw! The little boy, always the little boy,” he cried; “I think that little boy will be the death of me.” Mrs. Randolph, who had heard of this child as the most troublesome of children, gave all her sympathy to her husband, and he contented himself with another message back again, saying that he had no doubt Mr. Swan would soon find the little fugitive, who had not come to him as the schoolmaster supposed. The day, however, which had begun thus in excitement, soon had other incidents to make it memorable. Early in the afternoon other telegrams came. The one he first opened was from Mr. Pen; this at least must be what he hoped for. But instead of telling of the Squire’s death, Mr. Pen telegraphed to him an entreaty which he could not understand. “Lilias is missing too—for God’s sake go at once to the school and ascertain if she is there.” What did he mean—what did the old fool mean?
“Here is another, Randolph,” said his wife, composing her face into solemnity. “I fear—I fear this at least must be bad news from the Castle.”
In the heat of his disappointment and impatience Randolph was as nearly as possible exclaiming in over-sincerity, “Fear!—I hope it is, with all my heart.” But when he opened it he stood aghast; his brother’s name stared him in the face—“John Musgrave.” How came it there—that outlawed name? It filled him with such a hurry and ferment of agitation that he cared nothing what the message was; he let it drop and looked up aghast in his wife’s face.
“Is it so?” she said, assuming the very tone, the right voice with which a clergyman’s wife ought to speak of a death. “Alas, my poor dear husband, is it so? is he gone indeed?”
But Randolph forgot that he was a clergyman and all proprieties. He threw down the hideous bit of paper and jumpedto his feet and paced about the room in his excitement. “He has come, confound him!” he cried.
Not gone! that would have been nothing but good news—but this was bad indeed, something unthought of, never calculated upon; worse than any misgiving he had ever entertained. He had been uneasy about the child, the boy whom everybody would assume to be the heir; but John—that John should return—that he should be there before his father died—this combination was beyond all his fears.
After he had got over the first shock he took up the telegram to see what it was that “John Musgrave, Penninghame Castle,”—the name written out in full letters, almost with ostentation, no concealing or disguising of it, though it was a name lying under the utmost penalties of the law—had to say to him.
“My little daughter has been decoyed away under pretence that her brother was in danger. You can reach the place to-day. I cannot. Will you serve me for once, and go and telegraph if she is safe?” This was the communication. Randolph’s breast swelled high with what he felt to be natural indignation. “I serve him! I go a hundred miles or so for his convenience. I will see him—hanged first!” Hanged—yes, that was what would happen to the fellow if he were caught, if everybody were not so weakly indulgent, so ready to defeat the law. And this was the man who ventured to bid his brother “serve him for once,” treating him, Randolph, a clergyman, a person irreproachable, in this cavalier fashion. What had he to do with it if the little girl had been decoyed away? No doubt the little monkey, if all were known, was ready enough to go. He hoped in his heart they were both gone together, and would never be heard of more.
When he came as far as this, however, Randolph pulled himself up short. After all, he was not a bad man to rejoice in the afflictions of his neighbours; he only wished them out of his way, he did not wish any harm to them; and he felt that what he had just said in his heart was wicked, and might bring down a “judgment.” To come the length of a wish that your neighbour may not thrive is a thing that no respectable person should allow himself to do; a little grudging of your neighbour’s prosperity, a little secret satisfaction in his trouble, is a differentmatter,—but articulately to wish him harm! This brought him to himself and made him aware of his wife’s eyes fixed upon him with some anxiety. She was a gentle little believing sort of woman, without any brains to speak of, and she thought dear Randolph’s feelings had been too much for him. Her eyes were fixed on him with devout sympathy. How much feeling he had, though he did not speak much of it; what strong affections he had! Randolph paused a little to calm himself down. These all-trusting women are sometimes an exasperation unspeakable in their innocence, but still, on the other hand, a man must often make an effort not to dispel such belief. He said, “No, my dear, it is not what I thought; my father is not dead, but suffering, which is almost worse; and my brother whom you have heard of—who has been such a grief to us all—has come home unexpectedly.”
“Oh, Randolph!” The innocent wife went to him and took his hand and caressed it. “How hard upon you! How much for you to bear! Two such troubles at once.”
“Yes, indeed,” he said, accepting her sympathy, “and the little boy whom I told you of, whom I took to school,—well, he has run away—— ”
“Oh, Randolph dear, what mountains of anxiety upon you!”
“You may say so. I must go, I suppose, and look after this little wretch. Put me up something in the little portmanteau—and from thence I suppose I had better go on to Penninghame again. Who knows what trouble may follow John’s most ill-advised return?”
“And they all lean so on you,” said the foolish wife. Notwithstanding these dozen years of separation between him and his family, she was able to persuade herself of this, and that he was the prop and saviour of his race. There is nothing that foolish wives will not believe.
Randolph, however, wavered in his decision after he had made up his mind to go. Why should he go, putting himself to so much trouble at John’s order? He changed his mind half a dozen times in succession. Finally, however, he did go, sending two messages back on his way, one to John, the other to Mr. Pen. To John he said: “I am alarmed beyond measure to seeyour name. Is it safe for you to be there? Know nothing about little girl, but hear that little boy has run away from school and am going to see.” Thus he planted, or meant to plant, an additional sting in his brother’s breast. And as he travelled along in the afternoon, going to see after Nello, his own exasperation and resentment became so hot within him, that when he arrived at the junction, he sent a message of a very different tenor to Mr. Pen. He did not perhaps quite know what he was doing. He was furious with disappointment and annoyance and confusion, feeling himself cheated, thrust aside, put out of the place which he ought to have filled. Nello would have had harsh justice had he been brought before him at such a moment, “Little troublesome, effeminate baby, good for nothing, and now to be ruined in every way. But I wash my hands of him,” Randolph said.
Onthat same morning when so many things occurred, young Lord Stanton was seated in the library at Stanton, with a great deal of business to do. He had letters to write, he had the accounts of his agent to look over, and a hundred other very pressing matters which demanded his close attention. Perhaps it was only natural in these circumstances that Geoff should be unusually idle, and not at all disposed to tackle to his work. Generally he was so much interested in what was real work that he did it heartily, glad of the honest compulsion; but on this morning he was unsettled, and not in his usual mood of industry. He watched the leaves dropping from the trees outside, he listened idly to the sounds within; he scribbled on the margin of his accounts, now a bit of Latin verse (for Mr. Tritton was an elegant scholar), now a grotesque face, anything but the steady calculations he ought to have made. Now and then a sudden recollection of something he had read would cross his mind,when he would get up in the middle of a letter to seek the book in which he thought it was and verify his recollection on the spot, a thing he would not have taken the trouble to do had that floating recollection had any connection with the work in which he professed to be engaged. In short, he was entirely idle, distracted, anddesœuvré. Mr. Tritton was reading to Lady Stanton in her morning room. It was early; the household were all busy and occupied,—all except the young master of it, who could not settle to his work.
He was sitting thus when his easily distracted attention was caught by a movement outside, not like anything that could be made by bird or dog, the only two living creatures likely to be there so close to his window. It was the same window through which he had gone out the evening he made his night expedition to the hills. The sound caught his attention, as anything would have done that gave him an excuse for raising his head from the letters he was now trying to write, having given up the accounts in despair. When he saw a shadow skirt the grass, Geoff watched with eager interest for what would follow—then there was a pause, and he had bent over the letter again, thinking it a mere trick of fancy, when a sound close to him made him start and look up. Some one was standing with his back to the morning light—standing across the window-sill with one foot within the room. Geoff started to his feet with momentary alarm. “Who are you? Ah! is it Bampfylde?” he said.
“Just me, my young lord. May I come in and speak a word?”
“Certainly—come in. But why not go to the front door and come in like any one else? You do not suppose I should have shut my doors onyou?”
“Maybe, no; but I’m not a visitor for the like of you. I’m little credit about a grand house. I’ve not come here for nothing now, but to ask you a service.”
“What is it, Bampfylde? If I can do anything for you I will.”
“It’s not exactly for me, but you can do it if you will, my young lord. It’s something I’m hindered from doing. It’s for the young ones at the Castle, that you know of. Both thebairns are in trouble, so far as I can judge. I gave the little boy a carrier to let off if he wanted help. Me, and still more the old woman, we misdoubted that brother. And nigh a week ago the carrier came home, but I was away on—on a hard job, that I’m on still, and she did not understand. And when I saw her and told her yesterday what the sign was, what does the old woman do but tell the little lady—the little miss—and so far as I can hearshe’saway, the creature herself, a flower of a thing, no bigger than my arm, the very image of our Lily: her—that atom—she’s away to deliver her brother, my young lord,” said the vagrant, leaning against the window. “I’m most worn out by the same sort o’ work. There’s far too much of that been done among us one way and another, andshe’saway now on the same errand—to save her brother. It’s laughable if you think on’t,” he said, with a curious gurgle in his throat of forlorn ridicule.
Geoff, who had leaned forward at the name of the children, saw that Bampfylde was very pale and worn, his clothes in less order than usual, and an air of utter weariness and harassment about him. He looked like a man who had not slept or undressed for days.
“Has anything new happened?” Geoff asked hurriedly. “Of course I will do whatever I can for the children—but tell me first—has anything happened with you?”
“Ay, plenty,” said the rough fellow with a great sigh, which was not sentiment but fatigue. “If that will not vex you, my young lord, saving your presence, I’ll sit down and rest my bones while I talk to you, for I’m near dead with tiredness.He’sgiven us the slip—I cannot tell you how. Many a fear we’ve had, but this time it’s come true. Tuesday was a week he got away, the day after I’d been to see about the little lad. We thought he was but hanging about the fells in corners that none but him and me know, as he once did before, and I got him back. But it’s worse than that. Lord! there’s many an honest man lost on the fells in the mists, that has a wife and bairns looking to him. Would it not be more natural to take the likes of him, and let the father of a family go free? I cannot touch him, but there’s no law to bind the Almighty. But all that’s little to the purpose.He’s loose ranging about the country and me on his heels. I’ve all but had him three or four times, but he’s aye given me the slip.”
“But this is terrible; it is a danger for the whole country,” said Geoff. “The children!” The young man shuddered, he did not realize that the children were at a distance. He thought of nothing more than perhaps an expedition among the fells for Lilias—and what if she should fall into the madman’s hands? “You should have help—you should rouse the country,” he said.
“I’ll no do that. Please God I’ll get him yet, and this will be the end,” said Bampfylde solemnly. “She cannot make up her mind to it even now. She’s infatuate with him. I thought it would have ended when you put your hand into the web, my young lord.”
“It is my fault,” said Geoff. “I should have done something more; but then Mr. Musgrave fell ill, and I have been waiting. If he dies, everything must be gone into. I was but waiting.”
“I am not blaming you. She cannot bide to hear a word, and so she’s been all this long time. Now and then her heart will speak for the others—them that suffer and have suffered—but it aye goes back to him. And I don’t blame her neither,” said Bampfylde. “Its aye her son to her, that was a gentleman and her pride.” He had placed himself not on the comfortable chair which Geoff had pushed forward for him, but on the hard seat formed by the library steps, where he sat with his elbows on his knees, and his head supported in his hands, thus reposing himself upon himself. “It’s good to rest,” he said, with something of the garrulousness of weakness, glad in his exhaustion to stretch himself out, as it were, body and soul, and ease his mind after long silence. He almost forgot even his mission in the charm of this momentary repose. “Poor woman!” he added, pathetically; “I’ve never blamed her. This was her one pride, and how it has ended—if it were but ended! No,” he went on after a pause, “please God there will be no harm. He’s no murdering-mad, like some poor criminals that have done less harm than him. It’s the solitary places he flees to, not the haunts o’ men; we’re brothers so far as that’s counting. And I drop a word of warning as I go. I tell the folks that I hearthere’s a poor creature ranging the country that is bereft of his senses, and a man after him. I’m the man,” said Bampfylde, with a low laugh, “but I tell nobody that; and oh the dance he’s led me!” Then rousing himself with an effort, “But I’m losing time, and you’re losing time, my young lord. If you would be a help to them you should be away. Get out your horse or your trap to take you to the train.”
“Where has she gone—by the train?”
“Ay—and a long road. She’s away there last night, the atom, all by herself. That’s our blood,” said Bampfylde, with again the low laugh, which was near tears. “But I need not say our blood neither, for her father has suffered the most of all, poor gentleman—the most of all! Look here, my young lord,” he said, suddenly rising up, “if I sit there longer I’ll go to sleep, and forget everything; and we’ve no time for sleep, neither you nor me. Here’s the place. There’s a train at half-past eleven that gets there before dark. You cannot get back to-night; you’ll have to leave word that you cannot get back to-night. And go now; go, for the love of God!”
Geoff did not hesitate; he rang the bell hastily, and ordered his dog-cart to be ready at once, and wrote two or three lines of explanation to his mother. And he ordered the servant, who stared at his strange companion, to bring some food and wine. But Bampfylde shook his head. “Not so,” he said; “not so. Bit nor sup I could not take here. We that once made this house desolate, it’s not for us to eat in it or drink in it. You’re o’er good, o’er good, my young lord; but I’ll not forget the offer,” he added, the water rushing to his eyes. He stood in front of the light stretching his long limbs in the languor of exhaustion, a smile upon his face.
“You have overdone yourself, Bampfylde. You are not fit for any more exertion. What more can you do than you have done? I’ll send out all the men about the house, and—— ”
“Nay, but I’ll go to the last—as long as I can crawl. Mind you the young ones,” he said; “and for all you’re doing, and for your good heart, God bless you, my young lord!”
It seemed to Geoff like a dream when he found himself standing alone in the silent room among his books, with neither sightnor sound of any one near. Bampfylde disappeared as he had come, in a moment, vanishing among the shrubberies; and the young man found himself charged with a commission he did not understand, with a piece of dirty paper in his hand, upon which an address was rudely scrawled. What was he to do at this school, a day’s journey off, about which he knew nothing? He would have laughed at the wild errand had he not been too deeply impressed by his visitor’s appearance and manner to be amused by anything thus suggested. But wild as it was, Geoff was resolved to carry it out. Even the vaguest intimation of danger to Lilias would have sufficed to rouse him, but he had scarcely taken that thought into his mind. He could think of nothing but Bampfylde, and this with a pang of sympathy and interest which he could scarcely explain to himself. As he drove along towards the Stanton station, the first from Pennington, his mind was entirely occupied with this rough fellow. Something tragic about him, in his exhaustion, in theeffusionof his weakness, had gone to Geoff’s heart. He looked eagerly for traces of him—behind every bush, in every cross-road. And to increase his anxiety, the servant who accompanied him began to entertain him with accounts of a madman who had escaped from an asylum, and who kept the country in alarm. “Has he been seen anywhere? has he harmed any one?” Geoff asked, eagerly. But there were no details to be had; nothing but the general statement. Geoff gave the man orders to warn the gamekeepers and out-door servants, and to have him secured if possible. It was scarcely loyal perhaps to poor Bampfylde, who had trusted him. Thus he had no thought but Bampfylde in his mind when he found himself in the train, rushing along on the errand he did not understand. It was a quick train, the one express of the day; and even at the junction there were only a few minutes to wait: very unlike the vigil that poor little Lilias had held there in the middle of night under the dreary flickering of the lamp. Geoff knew nothing of this; but by dint of thinking he had evolved something like a just idea of the errand on which he was going. Lilias had been warned that her brother was not happy, and had gone like a little Quixote to relieve him. Geoff could even form an idea to himself of the pre-occupation of the house with theSquire’s illness, which would close all ears to Lilias’ appeal about Nello’s fancied unhappiness. Little nuisance! Geoff himself felt disposed to say—thinking any unhappiness that could happen to Nello of much less importance than the risk of Lilias. But he had not, of course, the least idea of Nello’s flight. He arrived at the station about five o’clock in the afternoon, adding another bewilderment to the solitary official there, who had been telegraphed to from Penninghame, and already that day had been favoured by two interviews with Mr. Swan. “A young lady? I wish all young ladies were—— Here’s a message about her; and the schoolmaster, he’s been at me, till I am sick of my life. What young lady could there be here? Do you think I’m a-hiding of her?” he cried, with that instinctive suspicion of being held responsible which is so strong in his class. Geoff however, elicited by degrees all that there was to find out, and discovered at the same time that the matter was much more serious than he supposed. The little boy had run away from school; the little girl, evidently coming to meet him, had disappeared with him. It was supposed that they must have made for the railway, as the woman in the cottage close by had confessed to having given them breakfast; but they had disappeared from her ken, so that she half-thought they had been ghost-children, with no reality in them; and though the country had been scoured everywhere, neither they, nor any trace of them, were to be found.
This was the altogether unsatisfactory ground upon which Geoff had to work,—and at five o’clock on an October afternoon there is but little time for detailed investigation of a country. His eye turned, as that of Lilias had done, to the wood. It was the place in which she would naturally take refuge. Had the wood been examined? he asked. Yes, every corner of it. Geoff was at his wits’ end, and did not know what to do; he went down the road where Lilias had gone in the morning and talked to the woman, who told him a moving story of the tired pair, and declared that she would not have let them go, seeing very well that they were a little lady and gentleman, but that they had stolen away when her back was turned. Geoff stood at the cottage door gazing round him, when he saw something that noone else had noticed, a small matter enough. Caught upon the hedge, which reached close to the cottage, there was a shred of blue—the merest rag, a few threads, nothing more—such an almost invisible indication as a savage might leave to enable his companions to track him—a thing that could be seen only by instructed eyes. Geoff’s eyes were inexperienced, but they were keen: and he knew the colour of Lilias’ dress, which the other searchers were not aware of. He disentangled the threads carefully from the twig. One long hair, and that too was Lilias’ colour, had caught on the same thorn. This seemed to him a trace unmistakeable, notwithstanding that the woman of the cottage immediately claimed it. “Dear, I did not know that I had torn my best blue dress,” she said, with genuine alarm. Geoff, however, left her abruptly, and followed out his clue. He hastened by the footpath behind the hedge towards the wood. It was the natural place for Lilias to be. By this time the young man had forgotten everything except the girl, who was at once a little child appealing to all his tenderest sympathies, and a little visionary princess to whom he had vowed himself. She was both in the combination of the moment—a tired child whom he could almost carry away in his arms, who would not be afraid of him, or shrink from these brotherly arms; but, at the same time, the little mother-woman, the defender and protector of one more helpless than herself. Geoff’s heart swelled with a kind of heavenly enthusiasm and love. Never could there have been a purer passion. He hurried through the wood and through the wood, searching in all its glades and dells, peering into the very hollows of the old trees. There was nothing: Was there nothing? Not a movement, not a sound, except the birds chirping, the rush of a rabbit or squirrel, the flutter of the leaves in the evening air. For it was evening by this time, that could not be denied; the last, long, slant rays of the sun were sloping along the trunks and roots of the trees, and the mossy greenness that covered them. The day was over in which a man could work, and night—night that would chill the children to the heart, and drive them wild with fear—desolate, dark night, full of visionary terrors, and also real dangers, was coming. Geoff had made up his mind certainly that they were there. He did not think of a magician’s cave or a hermit’s cell, as Lilias had done, but only whether there was some little hut anywhere, where they could have found refuge,—a hollow, unknown to him, where they might have hid themselves, not knowing a friend was near. The sun had lit up an illumination in the west, and shone through the red and yellow leaves with reflections of colour softer and more varying, but still more brilliant, than their own. The world seemed all ablaze between the two, with crimson and gold—autumn sun above, autumn foliage below. Then tone by tone and colour by colour died out from the skies, and the soft yet cold grey of the evening took possession of all. The paths of the wood seemed to grow ghostly in the gathering dusk, the colour stole out of the trees, the very sky seemed to drop lower as the night gathered in. Geoff walked about in a kind of despair. He called them, but there came no answer; he seemed to himself to poke into every corner, into the damp depths where the cold dew seemed to ooze out from the ground weighing down every leaflet. He was sure they were there. Must they spend the night in the dark, and be frozen and frightened to death before the morning? Geoff’s heart was full of anxiety and pity. It seemed to him that he must stay there to keep them company, whether he could find them or not.
Then all at once he heard a sound like a low sob. It seemed to come from the ground, close to where he was standing, but he could see nothing but a little tangle of wild brambles, long branches with still a solitary berry here and there, the leaves scanty, scarlet and brown with the frost. They were all clustered about the trunk of a big tree, a little thicket, prickly and impregnable, but close to the path. And was it the breathing of the night air only, or some wild creature in the brushwood, or human respiration, that came soft, almost indistinguishable in the soft murmur of the wood? He stood still, scarcely venturing himself to breathe, so intent was he to listen; and by and by he heard the sound again. A child’s sob, the soft pathetic reverberation of a sob, such as continues to come after the weeping is over. With trembling eagerness, yet caution, Geoff put aside the long tangles of the bramble which fell in a kind of arch. It was a hard piece of work, and had to be done with caution not to disturb thepoor little nestlings, if nestlings there were. There Geoff disclosed to the waning light the prettiest pathetic picture. It was not the same green hollow in which the children had first taken refuge. They had been roused by the sound of passengers through the wood, and the voices of the people who were searching for themselves, and had woke up in fright. When these noises ceased they had strayed deeper into the wood to another and safer shelter, Nello being too frightened and miserable to go on as Lilias wished. At last they had found this refuge under the bramble bushes where nobody surely could ever find them, meaning to lie there all day and creep out at night to continue their journey. Lilias had seated herself first, spreading out her skirt to protect her brother from the damp. There, lying with his head and shoulders supported on her lap, he had gone to sleep again, while Lilias waked and pondered; very anxious, frightened too, and dissatisfied with the loss of time, she sat erect, supporting Nello, and gazed up at the dark figure in the twilight with alarmed eyes, which seemed to grow larger and larger as they shone in a passion of terror through the long tangles of the bush. Lilias had covered her brother with her shawl—she drew it over him now, covering the white little face on her arm, “What do you want with me? I am only resting. There is no one here to do any harm,” she said, with the sob coming again in spite of her. She thought it was the cruel schoolmaster, the more cruel uncle, who had condemned Nello to so many sufferings. She held her arms over him, protecting him—resolute not to let him be taken from her. “Oh, do not meddle with me!” she went on, growing more and more desperate. “I have some money I will give you, if you will only—only leave me alone. There is nobody—but me.”
Oh that sob! if she could only swallow it down and talk to him, this robber chief, this Robin Hood, as if she were not afraid! for sometimes these men are kind and do not hurt the weak. Lilias gazed, nothing but her eyes appearing, glowing through the gathering shade: then suddenly threw her brother off her lap in a transport of wild delight, “Oh Nello, Nello, Nello!” she cried, till the wood rang, “it is Mr. Geoff!”
Geofftook the children home without let or hindrance. There was no inn near where they could pass the night; and as he had no legitimate right to their custody, and was totally unknown and very young, and might not awaken any lively faith in the bosom of authority as against the schoolmaster or the uncle, he thought it wisest to take them away at once. He managed to get some simplest food for them with difficulty—a little bread and milk—and made them lie down propped amid the cushions of a first-class carriage, which was to be hooked on to the evening train when it arrived. Before they left the little station he had the satisfaction of seeing Randolph Musgrave arrive, looking sour and sullen. Geoff did not know that Randolph had done anything unkind to the children. Certainly it was none of his fault that Lilias was there; but what good partisan ever entered too closely into an examination of the actual rights and wrongs of a question? Randolph might have been innocent—as indeed he was—of any downright evil intention; but this availed him nothing. Geoff looked out of the window of his own carriage as they glided away from the station, and gazed with intensest schoolboy pleasure on the glum and sour countenance of the churlish uncle, who, but for his own intervention, might have wrought destruction to those new babes in the wood. He shivered when he thought of the two helpless creatures lying under the brambles too frightened to move, and feeling to their hearts all the fantastic horrors of the darkness. Now, though still in movement, and undergoing still further fatigue, the absolute rest which had fallen upon their childish spirits from the mere fact that he was there, touched the young man to the heart. They were willing to let him take them anywhere; their cares were over. Nello had even made a feeble little attempt to shake his draggled plumes and swagger a little, sore and uncomfortable though he was, before he clambered into the carriage; and Lilias lay in the nest he had made for her, looking out with eyes of measureless content—so changed from those great, wistful, unfathomable oceans of anxiety and fear which had looked at him through the brambles! She put her hand into his as he settled himself in his corner beside her—the little soft child’s hand, which he warmed in his strong clasp, and which clung to him with a hold which did not relax even in her dreams; for she went to sleep so, holding him fast, feeling the sense of safety glow over her in delicious warmth and ease. Through all the night, even when she slept, at every movement he made, her soft fingers closed more firmly upon his hand. It was the child’s anchor of safety; and this clinging, conscious and unconscious, went straight to Geoff’s heart. In the dark, under the waning light of the lamp overhead, he watched the little face sinking into sleep, with now a faint little smile upon it—a complete relaxation of all the strained muscles—with a sensation of happiness which was beyond words. Sometimes, for the mere pleasure of it, he would make a movement wantonly to feel the renewed clasp of the little hand and see the drowsy opening of the eyes. “Are you there, Mr. Geoff?” she said now and then, with a voice as soft (he thought) as the coo of a dove. “Yes, my Lily;” he would say, with his heart swelling in his young bosom; and Lilias would drop to sleep again, smiling at him, with sleepy eyes, in what ease and infinite content! As for Nello, he snored now and then out of very satisfaction and slumbering confidence; little snores, something between a little cherub’s trumpet and the native utterance of the tenderest of little pigs—at that age when even little piggies, by reason of babyhood, have something cherubic about them too.
At midnight, at the great junction, a tall, sunburnt, anxious-faced man walked along the line of carriages, looking in with eager looks. “Are these your children?” he said to Geoff, seeing the two little figures laid up among the cushions, and not remarking how young their companion was. He spoke abruptly, but taking off his hat with an apologetic grace, which Geoff thought “foreign,” as we are all so apt to suppose unusual courtesy to be. A sudden inspiration seized the young man. He did not know who this was, but somehow he never doubted who it was the stranger sought. “They are the little Musgraves of Penninghame,” he said, simply, “whom I am taking home.”
The tall stranger wavered for a moment, as though he might have fallen; then, in a voice half-choked, he asked, “May I come beside you?” He sat down in the seat opposite to Geoff. After an anxious inspection of the two little faces, now settled into profound sleep, “Thank God!” he said. “They are all I have in the world.”
Who could it be? Geoff’s ears seemed to tingle with the words—“all I have in the world.” He sat in his dark corner and gazed at this strange new-comer, who was more in the light. And the new-comer gazed at him. Seeing, after a while, the child’s hand clasped in his—a mark of trust which, sweet as it was, kept young Geoff in a somewhat forced attitude not comfortable for a long night journey,—“I do not know you,” he said, “but my little girl seems to put her whole trust in you, and that must make me your grateful servant too.”
“Then you are John Musgrave?” cried the young man. “Oh, sir, I am glad—most glad, that you have come home! Yes, I think she likes me; and child or woman,” cried young Geoff, clasping the little hand close with a suddeneffusion, “I shall never care for any one else.”
Serious, careworn, in peril of his life, John Musgrave laughed softly in his beard. “This is my first welcome home,” he said.
Geoff found a carriage waiting for him at Stanton. His first impulse having been to take the children to his mother, he gave them up now with a pang, having first witnessed the surprise of incredulous delight with which Lilias flung herself at her waking upon her father. The cry with which she hailed him, the illumination of her face, and, Geoff felt, her utter forgetfulness of his own claims, half-vexed the young man after his uncomfortable night; and it was with a certain pang that he gave the children up to their natural guardian. “Papa, this is Mr. Geoff,” Lilias said; “no one has ever been so kind; and he knows about you something that nobody else knows.”
John Musgrave looked up with a gleam of surprise and a faint suffusion of colour on his serious face. “Every one here knows aboutme,” he said, with a sigh; and then he turned to the young guardian of his children, “Lily’s introduction is of the slightest,” he said. “I don’t know you, nor how you have been made totake so much interest in them—how you knew even that they wanted help: but I am grateful to you with all my heart, all the same.”
“I am Geoffrey Stanton,” said the young man. He did not know how to make the announcement, but coloured high with consciousness of the pain that must be associated with his name. But it was best, he felt, to make the revelation at once. “The brother of Walter Stanton, whom——. As Lilias says, sir, I know more about you than others know. I have heard everything.”
John Musgrave shook his head. “Everything! till death steps in to one or another of the people concerned, that is what no one will ever know; but so long as you do not shrink from me, Lord Stanton—— You are Lord Stanton; is it not so?”
“I am not making any idle brag,” said Geoff. “I knoweverything. It was Bampfylde himself—Dick Bampfylde himself—who sent me after the children. I know the truth of it all, and I am ready to stand by you, sir, whenever and howsoever you want me—— ”
Geoff bent forward eagerly, holding out his hand, with a flush of earnestness and enthusiasm on his young face. Musgrave looked at him with great and serious surprise. His face darkened and lighted up, and he started slightly at the name of Bampfylde. At last, with a moment’s hesitation, he took Geoff’s outstretched hand, and pressed it warmly. “I dare not ask what it is you do know,” he said, “but there is nothing on my hand to keep me from taking yours; and thank you a thousand times—thank you forthem. About everything else we can talk hereafter.”
In ten minutes after Geoff was whirling along the quiet country road on his way home. It was like a dream to him that all this should have happened since he last drove between those hedgerows, and he had the half-disappointed, half-injured feeling of one who has not carried out an adventure to its final end. He was worn out too, and excited, and he did not like giving up Lily into the hands of her father. Had it been Miss Musgrave he would have felt no difficulty. It was chilly in the early morning, and he buttoned up his coat to his chin, and put his hands in his pockets, and let his groom drive, who had evidentlysomething to say to him which could scarcely be kept in till they got clear of the station. Geoff had seen it so distinctly in the man’s face, that he had asked at once, “Is all right at home?” But he was too tired to pay much attention to anything beyond that. When they had gone on for about a quarter of an hour, the groom himself broke the silence. “I beg your pardon, my lord—— ”
“What is it?” Geoff, retired into the recesses of his big coat, had been half asleep.
Then the man began an excited story. He had heard a scuffle and a struggle at a point of the road which they were about approaching when on his way to meet his master. Wild cries “not like a human being,” he said, and the sound of a violent encounter. “I thought of the madman I was telling your lordship of yesterday.” “And what was it?” cried Geoff, rousing up to instant interest; upon which the groom became apologetic.
“How could I leave my horse, my lord?—a young beast, very fresh, as your lordship knows. He’d have bolted if I’d have left him for a moment. It was all I could do, as it was, to hold him in with such cries in his ears. I sent on the first man I met. A man does not grapple with a madman unless he is obliged to—— ”
“But you sent the other man to do it,” said Geoff, half-amused, half-angry. He sprang from the phaeton as they came to the spot which the groom pointed out. It was a little dell, the course of a streamlet, widening as it ascended, and clothed with trees. Geoff knew the spot well. About half a mile further up, on a little green plateau in the midst of the line of sheltering wood which covered these slopes, his brother’s body had been found. He had been taken to see the spot with shuddering interest when he was a child, and had never forgotten the fatal place. The wood was very thick, with rank, dark, water-loving trees; and, whether it was fancy or reality, had always seemed to Geoff the most dismal spot in the county. All was quiet now, or so he thought at first. But there was no mistaking the evidence of wet, broken, and trampled grass, which showed where some deadly struggle had been. The spot was not farfrom the road—about five minutes of ascent, no more—and the young man pressed on, guided by signs of the fray, and in increasing anxiety; for almost at the first step he saw an old game-pouch thrown on the ground, which he recognised as having been worn by Bampfylde. Presently he heard, a little in advance of him, a low groan, and the sound of a sympathetic voice. “Could you walk, with my arm to steady you? Will you try to walk, my man?” Another low moaning cry followed. “My walking’s done in this world,” said a feeble voice. Geoff hurried forward, stifling a cry of grief and pain. He had known it since he first set foot on that fatal slope. It was Bampfylde’s voice; and presently he came in sight of the group. The sympathiser was the same labouring man, no doubt, whom his groom had sent to the rescue. Wild Bampfylde lay propped upon the mossy bank, his head supported upon a bush of heather. The stranger who stood by him had evidently washed the blood from his face and unbuttoned his shirt, which was open. There was a wound on his forehead, however, from which blood was slowly oozing, and his face was pallid as death. “Let me be—let me be,” he said with a groan, as his kind helper tried to raise him. Then a faint glimmer of pleasure came over his ghastly face. “Ah, my young lord!” he said.
“What is it, Bampfylde? What has happened? Is he much hurt?” cried Geoff, kneeling down by his side. The man did not say anything, but shook his head. The vagrant himself smiled, with a kind of faint amusement in the mournful glimmer of his eyes.
“Not hurt, my young gentleman; just killed,” he said; “but you’re back—and they’re safe?”
“Safe, Bampfylde; and listen!—with their father. He has come to take care of his own.”
A warmer gleam lighted up the vagrant’s face. “John Musgrave here! Ah, but it’s well timed,” he cried feebly. “My young lord, I’m grieved but for one thing,—the old woman. Who will take care of old ’Lizabeth’? and she’s been a good woman—if it had not been her son that went between her and her wits. I’m sorry for her, poor old body; very, very sorry for her, poor ’Lizabeth. He’ll never be taken now, my young lord.Now he’s killed me, there’s none will ever take him. And so we’ll all be ended, and the old woman left to die without one—without one——!”
“My cart is at the foot of the hill,” said Geoff, quickly, addressing the labourer, who stood by with tears in his eyes; “take it, and bid the groom drive as fast as the horse will go—and he’s fresh—for the first doctor you can find; and bid them send an easy carriage from Stanton—quick! For every moment you save I’ll give you—— ”
“I want no giving. What a man can do for poor Dick Bampfylde, I will,” cried the other as he rushed down the slope. The vagrant smiled feebly again.
“They’re all good-hearted,” he said. “Not one of them but would do poor Dick Bampfylde a good turn; that’s a pleasure, my young lord. And you—you’re the best of all. Ay, let him go, it’ll please you; but me, my hour’s come.”
“Bampfylde, does it hurt you to speak? Can you tell me how it was?”
The poor fellow’s eyes were glazing over. He made an effort, when Geoff’s voice caught him as it were, and arrested the stupor. “Eh, my young lord? What needs to tell? Poor creature, he did not know me for a friend, far less a brother. And madness is strong—it’s strong. Tell the old woman that—it was notmehe killed—but—one that tried to take him. Ay—we were all playing about the beck, and her calling us to come in—all the family; him and—Lily—and me. I was always the least account—but it was me that would aye be first to answer;—and now we are all coming home—Poor old ’Lizabeth—Eh! what were you saying, my young lord?”
“Bampfylde! has he got clean off again, after this? Where is he? Can you tell me—for the sake of others if not for your own?”
“For mine!—Would it mend me to tell upon him?—Nay, nay, you’ll never take him—never now—but he’ll die—like the rest of us—that is what puts things square, my young lord—death!—it settles all; you’ll find him some place on the green turf—we were aye a family that liked the green grass underneath us—you’ll find him—as peaceable as me.”
“Oh, Bampfylde,” cried Geoff, “keep up your courage a little, the men will come directly and carry you to Stanton.”
“To carry me—to the kirkyard—that’s my place; and put green turf over me—nothing but green turf. So long as you will be kind to old ’Lizabeth; she’ll live—she’s not the kind that dies—and not one of us to the fore! What did we do—we or our fathers?” said the vagrant solemnly. “But, oh, that’s true, true—that’s God’s word: neither he did it nor his fathers—but that the works of God might be manifest. Eh, but I cannot see—I cannot see how the work of God is in it. My eyes—there’s not much good in my eyes now.”
Geoff kneeled beside the dying man not knowing what to do or say. Should he speak to him of religion? Should he question him about his own hard fate, that they might bring it home to the culprit? But Bampfylde was not able for either of these subjects. He was wading in the vague and misty country which is between life and death. He threw out his arms in the languor and restlessness of dying, and one of them dropped so that the fingers dipped in the little brook. This brought another gleam of faint pleasure to his pallid face.
“Water—give me some—to drink,” he murmured, moving his lips. And then, as Geoff brought it to him in the hollow of a leaf, the only thing he could think of, and moistened his lips and bathed his forehead, “Thank you, Lily,” he said. “That’s pleasant, oh, that’s pleasant. And what was it brought you here—youhere?—they’re all safe, the young ones—thanks to—— Eh! it’s not Lily—but I thought I saw Lily; it’s you, my young lord?”
“Yes, I am here—lean on me, Bampfylde. What can I do for you, what can I do?” Geoff had never seen death, and he trembled with awe and solemn reverence, far more deeply moved than the dying vagrant who was floating away on gentle waves of unconsciousness.
“Ay, Lily—d’ye hear her calling?—the house is dark, and the night’s fine. But let’s go to her—let’s go; he was aye the last, though she likes him best.” Bampfylde raised himself suddenly with a half-convulsive movement. “Poor ’Lizabeth!—poor old ’Lizabeth—all gone—all gone!” he said.
And what an hour Geoff spent supporting the poor head and moistening the dry lips of the man who was dead, yet could not die! He did not know there had been such struggles in the world.
Mr. Pennithornewas at the Castle almost all the day during which so many things occurred. While the children wandered in the wood and young Lord Stanton went in search of them, the Vicar could not leave the centre of anxiety. There was no possibility of going upon that quest till the evening, and good Mr. Pen thought it his bounden duty to stay with John to “take off his attention,” to distract his mind if possible from the object of his anxieties. It was all John Musgrave could do, by way of consideration for an old friend, to put up with these attentions, but he managed to do so without betraying his impatience, and Mr. Pen thought he had performed the first duty of friendship. He suggested everything he could think of that might have happened; most of his suggestions going to prove that Lilias was in very great peril indeed, though she might be saved by various ingenious ways. And he took Mary aside and shook his head, and said he was afraid it was a very bad business. He believed, good man, that he was of the greatest use to them both, and congratulated himself on having stayed to discharge this Christian duty. But Mrs. Pen at the Vicarage got cross and nervous, and did not think her husband was doing his duty to his home. When a telegram came in the afternoon, she was not only curious but frightened—for telegrams she thought were always messages of evil. What could it tell but harm? Perhaps that her father had been taken ill (Mr. Pen himself had no family, nor anybody to speak of belonging to him); perhaps that the investment had gone wrong in which all their little money was. She tore it open in great agitation, and read as follows:—
“John Musgrave is in the county and near you. Do youremember what is your duty as a magistrate, and what is the penalty of not performing it?”
Mrs. Pen read this alarming missive two or three times over before she could understand what it meant. John Musgrave! By degrees it became clear to her. This was why her husband deserted her, and spent his whole day at the Castle. He a magistrate, whose first duty it was to send John Musgrave to prison. The penalty—what was the penalty? The poor woman was in such a frenzy of agitation and terror that she did not know what to believe. What could they do to him if it was found out? She went to the window and looked for him; she went out and walked to the garden gate; she was not able to keep still. The penalty—what was it? Could they put him in prison instead of the criminal he allowed to go free? That seemed the most natural thing, and imagination conjured up before her the dreadful scene of Mr. Pen’s arrest, perhaps when he was going to church, perhaps when the house was full of people—everybody seeing—everybody knowing it. Mrs. Pen saw her husband dragged along the road in handcuffs before she came to an end of her imaginations. Was there nothing she could do to save him? She was ready to put herself in the breach, to say, like a heroine, “Take me, and let him go free?” but it did not appear to her likely that the myrmidons of the law would pay any attention to such a touching interposition. Then it occurred to her to look who it was, a thing she had not noticed at first, who had sent this kind warning. But this alarmed her more and more. It was some one who called himself “Friend,” who had taken the trouble from a distant place in the midland counties to telegraph thus to Mr. Pennithorne. A friend—it was then an anonymous warning, a very alarming thing indeed to the vulgar mind. Mrs. Pen worked herself up into a state of intense nervous agitation. She sent for the gardener that she might send him at once to the Castle for her husband. But before he came another train of reflections came across her mind. John Musgrave was her William’s friend. He was devoted to the family generally, and to this member of it in particular. Was he not capable of going to prison—of letting himself be handcuffed and dragged along the public road, and cast into a dungeon,rather than give up his friend to justice? Oh, what could the poor woman do? If she could but take some step—do something to save him before he knew.
All at once there occurred to Mrs. Pen a plan of action which would put everything right—save William in spite of himself, and without his knowledge, and put John Musgrave in the hands of justice without any action of his which could be supposed unfriendly. She herself, Mrs. Pen, did not even know John, so that if she betrayed him it would be nothing unkind, nobody could blame her, not Mary Musgrave herself. When the gardener came, instead of sending him to the Castle for her husband, she sent him to the village to order the fly in which she occasionally paid visits; and she put on her best clothes with a quiver of anxiety and terror in her heart. She put the telegram in her pocket, and drove away—with a half-satisfaction in her own appearance and half-pride in bidding the man drive to Elfdale, to Sir Henry Stanton’s, mingling with the real anxiety in her heart. She was frightened too at what she was about to do—but nobody could expect from her any consideration for John Musgrave, whom she had never seen; whereas, to save her husband from the consequences of his foolish faithfulness, was not that the evident and first duty of a wife? It was a long drive, and she had many misgivings as she drove along, with plenty of time to consider and reconsider all the arguments she had already gone over; but yet when she got to Elfdale she did not seem to have had any time to think at all. She was hurried in, before she knew, to Sir Henry Stanton’s presence. He was the nearest magistrate of any importance, and Mrs. Pen had a slight visiting acquaintance, of which she was very proud, with Lady Stanton. Had she repented at the last of her mission, she could always make out to herself that it was Lady Stanton she had come to visit. But it was Sir Henry whom she asked for, alarm for her husband at the last moment getting the better of her fears.
Sir Henry received her with a great deal of surprise. What could the little country clergyman’s wife want with him? But he was still more surprised when he heard her errand. John Musgrave at home!—within reach—daring justice—defying thelaw! His wife had told him of some supposed discovery which she at least imagined likely to clear Musgrave, by bringing in another possible criminal, but that must be some merely nonsensical theory he had no doubt, such as women and boys are apt to indulge:—for if anything could be worse than women, Sir Henry felt it was boys inspired by women, and carrying out their fancies. Therefore he had paid very little regard to what his wife said. Mrs. Pennithorne had the advantage of rousing him into excitement. “What! come back!—daring justice to touch him—insulting the family of the man he had killed, and the laws of the country!” Sir Henry fumed at the audacity, the evident absence of all remorse or compunction. “He must be a shameless, heartless ruffian,” he said; and then he looked at the harmless little woman who had brought him this news. “It is very public-spirited to bestir yourself in the matter,” he said. “Have you seen the man, Mrs. Pennithorne, or how have you come to know?”