“I have not seen him. Sir Henry. I don’t know anything about him, therefore nobody could say that it was unkind inme. How can you have any feeling for a person you never saw? I got—the news—to-day when my husband was at the Castle—hedid not tell me—he has nothing to do with it. He is a great friend of the Musgraves, Sir Henry; and I was told if he knew and did not tell it would bring him into trouble; so I came to you. I thought it was a wife’s duty. I did not wait till he came in to show him the telegram, but I came straight on to you.”
“Then you got a telegram?”
“Did I say a telegram?” she said, frightened. “Oh—I did not think what I was saying. But why should I conceal it? Yes, indeed, Sir Henry, this afternoon there came a telegram. I have never had a moment’s peace since then. I thought at first I would send for him and see what he would do, but then I thought—he thinks so much of the Musgraves—no doubt it would be a trouble to him to go against them; and so I thought before he came in I would come to you. I would not do anything without consulting my husband in any ordinary way, indeed, I assure you, Sir Henry. I am not a woman of that kind;but in a thing that might have brought him into such trouble—— ”
“And is that telegram all you know, Mrs. Pennithorne?”
A horrible dread that he was going to disapprove of her, instead of commending her, ran through her mind.
“It is all,” she said, faltering; “I have it in my pocket.”
To show the telegram was the last thing in her mind, yet she produced it now in impetuous self-defence. Having made such a sacrifice as she had done, acted on her own authority, incurred the expense of the fly, absented herself from home without anybody’s knowledge (though William was far too much wrapped up in the Musgraves to be aware of that), it was more than Mrs. Pennithorne could bear to have her motives thus unappreciated. She held out the telegram without pausing to think. He took it, and read it, with a curious look on his face. Sir Henry took a low view of wives, and of women in general. If she belonged to him how he would put her down, this meddling woman! but he was glad to learn what she had to tell, and to be able to act upon it. To approve of your informant and to use the information obtained are two very different things.
“This is a threat,” he said; “this is a very curious communication, Mrs. Pennithorne. Do you know who sent it? Friend! Is it a friend in the abstract, or does your husband know any one of the name?”
“I don’t know who it is. Oh no, Sir Henry. William knows no one—no one whom I don’t know! His friends are my friends. My husband is the best of men. He has not a secret from me. If I may seem to be acting behind his back it is only to save him, Sir Henry—only for his good.”
“You are acting in the most public-spirited way, Mrs. Pennithorne; but it is very strange, and I wonder who could have sent it. Do you know any one at this place?”
“Nobody,” she said, composing herself, yet not quite satisfied either, for public-spirited was but a poor sort of praise. She was conscious that she was betraying her husband as well as John Musgrave, and nothing but distinct applause and assurance that she had saved her William could have put her conscience quite at ease.
“It is very odd—very odd,” he said; “but I am very much obliged to you for bringing this information to me, and I shall lose no time in acting upon it. For a long time, a very long time, this man has evaded the law; but it will not do to defy it—it never does to defy it. He shall find that it is more watchful than he thought.”
“And, Sir Henry, of course it is of my husband I must think first. You will not say he knew? You will not let him get into trouble about it?—a clergyman, a man whom every one looks up to! You will save him from the penalty, Sir Henry? Indeed I have no reason to believe he knew at all; he has never seen this thing. I don’t suppose he knows at all. But he might be so easily got into trouble! Oh, Sir Henry! you will not let them bring in William’s name?”
“I shall take care that Mr. Pennithorne is not mentioned at all,” he said, with a polite bow; but he did not add, “You are a heroic woman and you have saved your husband,” which was the thing poor Mrs. Pen wanted to support her. She put back her telegram in her pocket very humbly, and rose up, feeling herself more a culprit than a heroine, to go away. At this moment Lady Stanton herself came in hurriedly.
“I heard Mrs. Pennithorne was here,” she said, with a half-apology to her husband, “and I thought I might come and ask what was the last news from Penninghame—if there was any change. I am not interrupting—business?”
“No; you will be interested in the news Mrs. Pennithorne brings me,” said Sir Henry, with a certain satisfaction. “Mr. Musgrave’s son John, in whom you have always shown so much interest, Walter Stanton’s murderer—— ”
“No, no,” she said, with a shudder, folding her hands instinctively; “no, no!” The colour went out of her very lips. She was about to hear that he had died. He must have died on the very day she saw him. She listened, looking at her husband all pale and awe-stricken, with a gasp in her throat.
—“Is here,” said Sir Henry, deliberately. “Here, where it was done, defying the law.”
Mary uttered a great cry of mingled relief and despair.
“Then it was he—it was he—and no ghost!” she cried.
“What! you knew and never told me? I am not so happy in my wife,” said Sir Henry, with a threatening smile, “as Mr. Pennithorne.”
“Oh, was it he—was it he?—no spirit—but himself? God help him,” cried Lady Stanton, with sudden tears. “No, I could not have told you, for I thought it was an apparition. And I would not, Henry,” she added with a kind of generous passion, “I would not, if I could. How could I betray an innocent man?”
“Happily Mrs. Pennithorne has saved you the trouble,” he said, getting up impatiently from his seat. He resented his wife’s silence, but he scorned the other woman who had brought him the news. “Do not let me disturb you, ladies, but this is too important for delay. The warrant must be out to-night. I trust to your honour, or I might arrest you both,” he said with a sneer—“two fair prisoners—lest you should warn the man and defeat justice again.”
“Henry, you are not going to arrest him—toarresthim—after what I told you? I told you that Geoff—— ”
“Geoff! send Geoff to your nursery, to play with your children, Lady Stanton,” he cried, in rising wrath, “rather than make a puppet of him to carry out your own ideas. I have had enough of boys’ nonsense and women’s. Go to your tea-table, my lady, and leave me to manage my own concerns.”
Then Lady Stanton—was it not natural?—with a white, self-contained passion, turned upon the other commonplace woman by her side, who stood trembling before the angry man, yet siding with him in her heart, as such women do.
“And is it you that have betrayed him?” she cried; “do you know that your husband owes everything to him—everything? Oh, it cannot be Mr. Pen’s doing—he loved them all too well. If it is you, how will you bear to have his blood on your head? God knows what they may prove against him, or what they may do to him; but whatever it is, it will be a lie, and his blood will be on your head. Oh, how could you, a woman, betray an innocent man?”
Lady Stanton’s passion, Sir Henry’s lowering countenance, the sudden atmosphere of tragedy in which she found herself, weretoo much for poor Mrs. Pen. She burst into hysterical crying, and dropped down upon the floor between these two excited people. Perhaps it was as good a way as any other of extricating herself out of the most difficult position in which a poor little, well-intentioned clergywoman had ever been.
Theafternoon of the day on which poor Bampfylde died was bright and fine, one of those beautiful October days which are more lovely in their wistful brightness, more touching, than any other period of the year—Summer still lingering, the smile on her lip and the tear in her eye, dressed out in borrowed splendour, her own fair garniture of flowers and greenery worn out, but wearing her Indian mantle with a tender grace, subdued and sweet. The late mignonette over-blown, yet fragrant, was sweet in the little village gardens, underneath the pale China roses that still kept up a little glow of blossom. Something had excited the village; the people were at their doors, and gathered in groups about. Miss Price, the dressmaker, held a little court. There was evidently something to tell, something to talk over more than was usual. The few passengers who were about stayed to hear, and each little knot of people which had managed to secure a new listener was happy. They were all in full tide of talk, commenting upon and discussing some occurrence with a certain hush, at the same time, of awe about them, which showed that the news was not of a joyful character—when some one came down through the village whose appearance raised the excitement to fever point. It was the well-known figure of the old woman in her grey cloak—so well known up the water and down the water, which thus suddenly appeared among them—old ’Lizabeth Bampfylde! The gossips shrank closer together, and gazed at her with eager curiosity all, with sympathy some. They drew awayfrom her path with a feeling which was half reverence and half fear. “Does she know—do you think she knows?” some of them asked; and exclamations of, “Poor old body—poor woman,” were rife among the kind-hearted; but all under their breath. ’Lizabeth took no notice of the people in her path; perhaps she did not even see them. She was warm with her long walk from the fells, and had thrown off her hood and knotted her red handkerchief over her cap. She went along thus with the long swing of her still vigorous limbs, stately and self-absorbed. Whatever she knew, her mind was too much occupied to take any notice of the people in her way. She had walked far, and she had far to walk still. She went on steadily through the midst of them without a pause, looking neither to the right nor the left. There was a tragic directness in the very way she moved, going straight as a bird flies, at least as straight as the houses permitted, minding no windings of the road. The people in front of her stood back and whispered; the people behind closed upon her path. Did she know? Would she have had the fortitude to come walking down here all this long way had she known? Was she going to Stanton, wheretheywere? Last of all, timidly, the people said among themselves, “Should not some one tell her?—some one should speak to her;” but by this time she had passed through the village, and they all felt with a sensation of relief that it was too late.
’Lizabeth walked on steadily along the water-side. It was a long way that she had still before her. She was going all the way down the water to Sir Henry Stanton’s, as Mrs. Pennithorne had gone the day before. The walk was nothing to her, and the long silence of it was grateful to her mind. She knew nothing of what had happened on the other side of the lake. Up in her little house among the hills, all alone in the strange cessation of work, the dead leisure which seemed to have fallen upon her, she had thought of everything till her head and her heart ached alike. Everything now seemed to have gone wrong. Her daughter dead in exile, and her daughter’s husband still a banished man, all for the sake of him who was roaming over the country, a fugitive escaped from her care. The life of her son Dick had been ruined by the same means. And now the cycle of misfortunewas enlarging. The little boy, who was the heir of the Musgraves, was lost too, because he had no one to protect him—Lily’s child; and the other Lily, the little lady whom she felt to be her own representative as well as Lily’s, who could tell what would become of her? It seemed to ’Lizabeth that this child was the most precious of all. All the rest had suffered for the sake of her madman; but the second Lily, the little princess, who had sprung from her common stock, nothing must touch. Yet it cannot be said that it was for Lily’s sake that she made up her mind at last; it was nothing so simple, it was a combination and complication of many motives. He was gone out of her hands who had been for years the absorbing occupation of her life. Dick was after him, it was true; but if Dick failed, how was he to be got without public help? and that help could not be given until the whole story was told. Then her own loneliness wrought upon her, and all the whispers and echoes that circled about the cottage, when he was not there. Her son, ill-fated companion, the ruin of all who had any connection with him, absorbed her so much in general, that she had no time to survey the surroundings and think of all that was, and had been, and might be. Was it he after all that was the cause of all the suffering? What did he know of it? The story of Lily and of John Musgrave was a blank to him. He knew nothing of what they had suffered, was innocent of it in reality. Had he known, would he not have given himself up a hundred times rather than the innocent should suffer for him? Was it he, then, or his mother, who was the cause of all? Several times, during their long agony, such thoughts had overwhelmed ’Lizabeth’s mind. They had come over her in full force when the children came to the Castle, and then it was that she had been brought to the length of revealing her secret to young Lord Stanton. Now everything was desperate about her; the little boy lost, the madman himself lost; no telling at any moment what misery and horror might come next. She thought this over day after day as the time passed, and no news came; waiting in the great loneliness, with her doors all open, that he might come in if some new impulse, or some touch of use and wont, should lead him back, her ears intent to hear every sound; her mind prepared(she thought) for anything; fresh violence, perhaps violence to himself; miserable death, terrible discovery. She thought she heard his wild whoops and cries every time the wind raved among the hills; if a mountain stream rushed down a little quicker than usual, swollen by the rain, over its pebbles, she thought it was his hurrying steps. It was always of him that her thoughts were, not of her other son who was pursuing the madman all about, subject to the same accidents, and who might perhaps be his victim instead of his captor. She never thought of that. But she was driven at last to a supreme resolution. Nobody could doubt his madness, could think it was a feint put on to escape punishment, now. And God, who was angry, might be propitiated if at last she made Him, though unwillingly, this sacrifice, this homage to justice and truth. This was the idea which finally prevailed in her mind. She would go and tell her story, and perhaps an angry God would accept, and restore the wanderer to her. If he were safe, safe even in prison, in some asylum, it would be better at least than his wild career of madness among all the dangers of the hills. She had risen in the morning from her uneasy bed, where she lay half-dressed, always watching, listening to every sound, with this determination upon her. She would propitiate God. She would do this thing she ought to have done so long ago. She did not deny that she ought to have done it, and now certainly she would do it, and God would be satisfied, and the tide of fate would turn.
All this struggle had not been without leaving traces upon her. Her ruddy colour, the colour of exposure as well as of health and vigour, was not altogether gone, but she was more brown than ruddy, and this partial paleness and the extreme gravity of her countenance added to the stately aspect she bore. She might have been a peasant-queen, as she moved along with her steady, long, swinging footstep, able for any exertion, above fatigue or common weakness. A mile or two more or less, what did that matter? It did not occur to her to go to Mr. Pennithorne, though he was nearer, with her story. She went straight to Sir Henry Stanton. He had a family right to be the avenger of blood. It would be all the compensation that could be made to the Stantons, as well as a sacrifice propitiating God. And nowthat she had made up her mind there was no detail from which she shrank. ’Lizabeth never remarked the pitying and wondering looks which were cast upon her. She went on straight to her end with a sense of the solemnity and importance of her mission, which perhaps gave her a certain support. It was no light thing that she was about to do. That there was a certain commotion and agitation about Elfdale did not strike her in the excited state of her mind. It was natural that agitation should accompany her wherever she went. It harmonized with her mood, and seemed to her (unconsciously) a homage and respectful adhesion of nature to what she was about to do.
The great door was open, the hall empty, the way all clear to the room in which Sir Henry held his little court of justice. ’Lizabeth had come by instinct to the great hall door—a woman with such a tragical object does not steal in behind-backs or enter like one of the unconsidered poor. She went in unchallenged, seeing nobody except one of the girls, who peeped out from a door, and retreated again at sight of her. ’Lizabeth saw nothing strange in all this. She went in, more majestically, more slowly than ever, like a woman in a procession—a woman marching to the stake. What stake, what burning could be so terrible? Two of the county police were at the open door; they looked at her with wondering awe, and let her pass. What could any one say to her? An army would have let her pass—the mother!—for they knew, though she did not know. ’Lizabeth saw but vaguely a number of people in the room—so much the better; let all hear who would hear. It would be so much the greater propitiation to an outraged heaven. She came in with a kind of dumb state about her, everybody giving way before her. “The mother!” they all said to each other with dismay, yet excitement. Some one brought her a chair with anxious and pitying looks. She put it away with a wave of her hand, yet made a little curtsey of acknowledgment in old-fashioned politeness. It never occurred to her mind to inquire why she was received with such obsequious attention. She advanced to the table at which Sir Henry sat. He too looked pityingly, kindly at her, not like his usual severity. God had prepared everything for her atonement—was it not an earnest ofits acceptance that He should thus have put every obstacle out of her way?
“Sir Henry Stanton,” she said, “I’ve come to make you acquaint with a story that all the country should have heard long ago. I’ve not had the courage to tell it till this moment when the Lord has given me strength. Bid them take pen and paper and put it all down in hand of write, and I’ll set my name to it. It’s to clear them that are innocent that I’ve come to speak, and to let it be known who was guilty; but it wasna him that was guilty—it wasna him—but the madness in him,” she said, her voice breaking for a moment. “My poor distracted lad!’
“Give her a seat,” said Sir Henry. “My poor woman, if you have any information to give about this terrible event—— ”
“Ay, I have information—plenty information. Nay, I want no seat. I’m standing as if I was at the judgment-seat of God; there’s where I’ve stood this many a year, and been judged, but aye held fast. What is man, a worm, to strive with his Maker?—but me, I’ve done that, that am but a woman. I humbly crave the Almighty’s pardon, and I’ve made up my mind to do justice now—at the last.”
The people about looked at each other, questioning one another what it was, all but two, who knew what she meant. Young Lord Stanton, who was close to the table, looked across at a tall stranger behind, by whom the village constable was standing, and who replied to Geoff’s look by a melancholy half-smile. The others looked at each other, and ’Lizabeth, though she saw no one, saw this wave of meaning, and felt it natural too.
“Ay,” she said, “you may wonder; and you’ll wonder more before all’s done. I am a woman that was the mother of three; bonny bairns—though I say it that ought not; ye might have ranged the country from Carlisle to London town, and not found their like. My Lily was the beauty of the whole water; up or down, there was not one that you would look at when my lass was by. What need I speak? You all know that as well as me.”
The swell of pride in her as she spoke filled the whole company with a thrill of admiration and wonder, like some great actress disclosing the greatness of impassioned nature in the simplestwords. She was old, but she was beautiful too. She looked round upon them with the air of a dethroned empress, from whom the recollection of her imperial state could never depart. Rachel could not have done it, nor perhaps any other of her profession. There was the sweetness of remembered triumph in the midst of the most tragic depths; a gleam of pride and pleasure out of the background of shame and pain.
“Ah! that’s all gone and past,” she went on with a sigh. “My eldest lad was more than handsome, he was a genius as well. He was taken away from me when he was but a little lad—and never came home again till—till the devil got hold of him, and made him think shame of his poor mother, and the poor place he was born in. I would never have blamed him. I would have had him hold his head with the highest, as he had a right—for had he not gotten that place for himself?—but when he came back to the water-side a great gentleman and scholar, and would never have let on where he belonged to, one that is not here to bear the blame,” said ’Lizabeth, setting her teeth—“one that is gone to his account—and well I wot the Almighty has punished him for his ill deeds—betrayed my lad. Some of the gentry were good to him—as good as the angels in heaven—but some were as devils, that being their nature. And this is what I’ve got to say:” here she made a pause, raised herself to her full height, and threw off the red kerchief from her head in her agitation. “I’ve come here to accuse before God, and you, Sir Henry, my son, Abel Bampfylde, him I was most proud of and loved best, of the murder of young Lord Stanton, which took place on the morning of the 2nd of August, eighteen hundred and forty-five—fifteen years ago and more.”
The sensation that followed is indescribable. Sir Henry Stanton himself rose from his seat, excited by wonder, horror, and pity, beyond all ordinary rule. The bystanders had but a vague sense of the extraordinary revelation she made, so much were they moved by the more extraordinary passion in her, and the position in which she stood. “My good woman, my poor woman!” he cried, “this last dreadful tragedy has gone to your brain—and no wonder. You don’t know what you say.”
She smiled—mournfully enough, but still it was a smile—andshook her head. “If you had said it as often to yourself as I have done—night and day—night and day; open me when I’m dead, and you’ll find it here,” she cried—all unaware that this same language of passion had been used before—and pressing her hand upon her breast. “The second of August, eighteen hundred and forty-five—if you had said it over as often as me!”
There was a whisper all about, and the lawyer of the district, who acted as Sir Henry’s clerk on important occasions, stooped towards him and said something. “The date is right. Yes, yes, I know the date is right,” Sir Henry said, half-angrily. Then added, “There must be insanity in the family. What more like the effort of a diseased imagination than to link the old crime of fifteen years ago with what has happened to-day?”
“Is it me that you call insane?” said ’Lizabeth. “Eh, if it was but me! But well I know what I’m saying.” Then the wild looks of all around her suddenly impressed the old woman, too much occupied hitherto to think what their looks meant. She turned round upon them with slowly awakening anxiety. “You’re looking strange at me,” she cried, “you’re all looking strange at me! What is this you’re saying that has happened to-day? Oh, my lad is mad!—he’s roaming the hills, and Dick after him; he does na know that he’s doing; he’s out of his senses; it’s no ill meaning. Lads, some of you tell me, I’m going distracted. What has happened to-day?”
The change in her appearance was wonderful; her solemn stateliness and abstraction were gone. Here was something she did not know. The flush of anxiety came to her cheeks, her eyes contracted, her lips fell apart.
“Tell me,” she said, “for the love of God!”
No one moved. They looked at each other with pale, alarmed faces. How could they tell her? Geoff stepped forward and took her by the arm very gently. “Will you come with me?” he said. “Something has happened; something that will grieve you deeply. I—I promised Dick to tell you, but not here. Won’t you come with me?”
She drew herself out of his grasp with some impatience. “There’s been some new trouble,” she said to herself—“some new trouble! No doubt more violence. Oh, God, forgive him;but he does not know what he’s doing. It’s you, my young lord?—you know it’s true what I’ve been saying. But this new trouble, what is it?—more blood? Oh, tell me the worst; I can bear it all, say, even if he was dead.”
“’Lizabeth,” said Geoff, with tears in his eyes—and again everybody looked on as at a tragedy—“you are a brave woman; you have borne a great deal in your life. He is dead; but that is not all.”
She did not note, nor perhaps hear, the last words. How should she? The first was enough. She stood still in the midst of them, all gazing at her, with her hands clasped before her. For a moment she said nothing. The last drop of blood seemed to ebb from her brown cheeks. Then she raised her face upward, with a smile upon it. “The Lord God be praised,” she said; “He’s taken my lad before me.”
And when they brought to her the seat she had rejected, ’Lizabeth allowed herself to be placed upon it. The extreme tension of both body and mind seemed to have relaxed. The look of tragic endurance left her face. A softened aspect of suffering, a kind of faint smile, like a wan sunbeam, stole over it. The moisture came to her strained eyes. “Gone? Is he gone at last? On the hill-side was it?—in some wild corner, where none but God could be near, not his mother? And me that was dreading and dreading I would be taken first; for who would have patience like his mother? But after all, you know, neighbours, the father comes foremost; and had more to do with him—more to do with him—than even me.”
“Take her away, Geoff,” said Sir Henry. The men were all overcome with this scene, and with the knowledge of what remained to be told. Sir Henry was not easily moved, but there was something even inhisthroat which choked him. He could not bear it, though it was nothing to him. “Geoff, this is not a place to tell her all you have got to tell. Take her away—take her—to Lady Stanton.”
“Nay, nay,” she said; “it’s my deathdoom, but it’s not like other sorrow—I know well what grief is—when I heard for certain my Lily was dead and gone, and me never to see her more. But this is not the same; it’s my death, but I cannotcall it sorrow; not like the loss of a son. I’m glad too, if you understand that. Poor lad!—my Abel! Ay, ay; you’ll not tell me but what God understands, and is more pitiful of His handiwork, say than the like of you or me.”
“Come with me,” said Geoff, taking her by the arm. “Come, and I will tell you everything, my poor ’Lizabeth. You know you have a friend in me.”
“Ay, my young lord; but first let them write down what I’ve said, and let me put my name to it. All the more because he’s dead and gone this day.”
“Everything shall be done as you wish,” said Geoff anxiously; “but come with me—come with me—my poor woman; this is not a place for you.”
“No,” she said—she would not rise from her seat. She turned round to the table where Sir Henry and his clerk sat. “I must end my work now it’s begun—I’ve another son, my kind gentlemen, and he will never forgive me if I do not end my work. Write it out and let me sign. I have but my Dick to think of now.”
A thrill of horror ran through the little assembly: to tell her that he too was gone, who would dare to do it? John Musgrave, whom she had not seen, stood behind, and covered his face with his hands. Sir Henry, for all his steady nerves and unsympathetic mind, fell back in his chair with a low groan. Only young Geoff, his features all quivering, the tears in his eyes, stood by her side.
“Humour her,” he said. “Let her have her own way. None of us at this moment surely could refuse her her way.”
The lawyer nodded. He had a heart of flesh and not of stone; and ’Lizabeth sat and waited, with her hands clasped together, her head a little raised, her countenance beyond the power of painting. Grief and joy mingled in it, and relief and anguish. Her eyes were dilated and wet, but she shed no tears; their very orbits seemed enlarged, and there was a quivering smile upon her mouth—a smile such as makes spectators weep. “Here I and sorrow sit.” There was never a king worthy the name but would have felt his state as nothing in this presence. But there was no struggle in her now. She had yielded, and all was peaceabout her. She would have waited for days had it been necessary. That what she had begun should be ended was the one thing above all.
A man came hurriedly in as all the people present waited round, breathless and reverential, for the completion of her testimony. Their business, whatever it was, was arrested by force of nature. The kind old Dogberry from the village, who had been standing by John Musgrave’s side by way of guarding him, put up his hand to his forehead and made a rustic bow to his supposed prisoner. “I always knowed that was how it would turn out,” he said, as he hobbled off, to which John Musgrave replied only by a faint smile, but stood still, as motionless as a picture, though all semblance of restraint had melted away. But while all waited thus reverentially a sudden messenger came rushing in, and addressing Sir Henry in a loud voice, announced that the coroner had sent him to make preparations for the inquest. “And he wants to know what time it will be most convenient for the jury to inspect the two bodies; and if they are both in the same place; and if it’s true.”
There was a universal hush, at which the man stopped in amazement. Then his eye, guided by the looks of the others, fell upon the old woman in the chair. She had heard him, and she was roused. Her face turned towards him with a growing wonder. “She here! O Lord, forgive me!” he cried, and fell back.
“Two bodies!” she said. A shudder came over her. She got up slowly from her seat and looked round upon them all. “Two—another, another!—oh, my unhappy lad!” She wrung her hands and looked round upon them, “Maybe another house made desolate; maybe another woman—Will you tell me who the other was?”
Here the labouring man, who had been with Wild Bampfylde on the hill-side, and who was standing by, suddenly succumbed to the strange horror and anguish of the moment. He burst out loudly into tears, crying like a child. “Oh, poor ’Lizabeth, poor ’Lizabeth!” he cried; he could not bear any more.
’Lizabeth looked at this man with the air of one awakening from a dream. Then she turned a look of inquiry upon thosearound her. No one would meet her eye. They shrank one behind another away from her, and more than one man burst forth into momentary weeping like the first, and some covered their faces in their hands. Even Geoff, sobbing like a child, turned away from her for a moment. She held out her hands to them with a pitiful cry, “Say it’s not that—say it’s not that!” she cried. The shrill scream of anguish ran through the house. It brought Lady Stanton and all the women shuddering from every corner. They all knew what it was and how it was. The mother! What more needed to be said? They came in and surrounded her, the frivolous girls and the rough women from the kitchen, all together, while the men stood about looking on. Not even Sir Henry could resist the passion of horror and sorrow which had taken possession of the place. He cried with a voice all hoarse and trembling, “Take her away!—take her away!”
’LizabethBampfylde went on to Stanton that same afternoon, where the remains of her two sons were lying. But she would not go in Lady Stanton’s carriage.
“Nay, nay; carriages were never made for me. I will walk, my lady. It’s best for me, body and soul.”
She had recovered herself after the anguish of that discovery. Before the sympathisers round her had ceased to sob, ’Lizabeth had raised herself up in the midst of them like an old tower. The storm had raged round her, but had not crushed her. Her face and even her lips had lost all trace of colour, her eyes were hollow and widened out in their sockets, like caves to hold the slow welling out of salt tears. There was a convulsive trembling now in the pose of her fine head, and in her hands; but her strength was not touched.
“Oh, how can you walk?” Lady Stanton said; “you are not able for it.”
“I am able for anything it’s God’s pleasure to send,” she said; “though it’s little even He can do to me now.” The women stood round her with pitiful looks, some of them weeping unrestrainedly; but the tears that ’Lizabeth shed came one by one, slow gathering, rarely falling. She put on her red handkerchief over her cap again, with hands that were steady enough till that twitch of nervous movement took them. “It should be black,” she said, with a half-smile; “ay, I should be a’ black from head to foot, from head to foot, if there was one left to mind.” Then she turned upon them with again her little stately curtsey. “I’m not a woman of many words, and ye may judge what heart I have to speak; but I thank ye all,” and, with once more a kind of smile, she set out upon her way.
John Musgrave had been standing by; he had spoken to no one, not even to Lady Stanton, who, trembling with a consciousness that he was there, had not been able, in the presence of this great anguish, to think of any other. He, and his story, and his return, altogether had been thrown entirely into the background by these other events. He came forward now, and followed ’Lizabeth out of the gate. “I am going with you,” he said. The name “mother” was on his lips, but he dared not say it. She gave a slight glance at him, and recognised him. But if one had descended from heaven to accompany her, what would that have been to ’Lizabeth? It was as if they had parted yesterday.
“Ay,” she said; then, after a pause, “it’s you that has the best right.”
The tragedy had closed very shortly after that penultimate chapter which ended with the death of Wild Bampfylde. When the carriage and its attendants arrived to remove him to Stanton he was lying on Geoff’s shoulder, struggling for his last breath. It was too late then to disturb the agony. The men stood about reverentially till the last gasp was over, then carried the vagrant tenderly to the foot of the hill, with a respect which no one had ever shown him before. One of the party, a straggler, who had strayed further up the dell in the interval of waiting, saw tracesabove among the broken bushes, which made him call some of his comrades as soon as their first duty was done. And there on the little plateau, where Walter Stanton’s body had been found fifteen years before, lay that of his murderer, the madman who had wrought so much misery. He was found lying across the stream as if he had stooped to drink, and had not been able to raise himself. The running water had washed all traces of murder from him. When they lifted him, with much precaution, not knowing whether his stillness might mean a temporary swoon, or a feint of madness to beguile them, his pale marble countenance seemed a reproach to the lookers-on. Even with the aspect of his victim fresh in their eyes, the men could not believe that this had ever been a furious maniac or man slayer. One of them went to look for Geoff, and to arrest the progress of the other funeral procession. “There’s another one, my lord,” he said, “all torn and tattered in his clothes, but with the look of a king.” And Geoff, notwithstanding his horror, could not but look with a certain awe upon the worn countenance. It might have been that of a man worn with great labours, with thought, with the high musings of philosophy, or schemes of statesmanship. He was carried down and laid by the side of his brother whom he had killed. All the cottagers, the men from the field, the passengers on the way, stood looking on, or followed the strange procession. Such a piece of news, as may be supposed, flew over the country like wildfire. There was no family better known than the Bampfyldes, notwithstanding their humble rank. The handsome Bampfyldes: and here they had come to an end!
Old ’Lizabeth, as she made her way to Stanton, was followed everywhere by the same atmosphere of sympathy. The women came out to their doors to look after her, and even strong men sobbed as she passed. What would become of her, poor lonely woman? She gave a great cry when she saw the two pale faces lying peacefully together. They were both men in the full prime of life, in the gravity of middle age, fully developed, strongly knit, men all formed for life, and full of its matured vigour. They lay side by side as they had lain when they were children. That one of them had taken the life of the other, who could have imagined possible? The poacher and vagrant looked like somegreat general nobly dead in battle, the madman like a sage. Death had redeemed them from their misery, their poverty, the misfortunes which were greater than either. Their mother gave a great cry of anguish yet pride as she stood beside them. “My lads,” she cried, “my two handsome lads, my bonny boys!” ’Lizabeth had come to that pass when words have no meaning to express the depths and the heights. What could a woman say who sees her sons stretched dead before her? She uttered one inarticulate wail of anguish, as a dumb creature might have done, and then her overwrought soul reeling, tottered almost on the verge of reason, and she cried out in pride and agony, “My handsome lads! my bonny boys!”
“Come home with me,” said John Musgrave. “We have made a bad business of it, ’Lizabeth, you and I. This is all our sacrifice has come to. Nothing left but your wreck of life, and mine. But come home with me. Where I am, there will always be a place for Lily’s mother. And there is little Lily still, and she will comfort you—— ”
“Eh! comfort me!” She smiled at the word. “Nay, I must go to my own house. I thank you, John Musgrave, and I do not deserve it at your hand. This fifteen years it has been me that has murdered you, not my lad yonder, not my Abel. What did he know? And I humbly beg your pardon, and your little bairns’ pardon, on my knees—but nay, nay, I must go home. My own house—there is no other place for me.”
They came round her and took her hands, and pleaded with her too—Geoff, and his mother, with the tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh, my poor woman, my poor woman!” Lady Stanton cried, “stay here whiletheyare here.” But nothing moved ’Lizabeth. She made her little curtsey to them all, with that strange smile like a pale light wavering upon her face.
“Nay, nay,” she said. “Nay, nay—I humbly thank my lady and my lord, and a’ kind friends—but my own house, that is the only place for me.”
“But you cannot go so far, if that were all. You must be worn out with walking only—if there was nothing more—— ”
“Me—worn out!—with walking!” It was a kind of laugh which came from her dry throat. “Ay, very near—very near it—that will come soon, if the Lord pleases. But good-day to you all, and my humble thanks, my lord and my lady—you’re kind—kind to give them house-room; till Friday; but they’ll give no trouble, no trouble!” she said, with again that something which sounded like a laugh. Laughing or crying, it was all one to ’Lizabeth. The common modes of expression were garments too small for her soul.
“Stay only to-night—it will be dark long before you can be there. Stay to-night,” they pleaded. She broke from them with a cry.
“I canna bide this, I canna bide it! I’m wanting the stillness of the fells, and the arms of them about me. Let me be—oh, let me be! There’s a moon,” she added, abruptly, “and dark or light, I’ll never lose my way.”
Thus they had to leave her to do as she pleased in the end. She would not eat anything, or even sit down, but went out with her hood over her head into the gathering shadows. They stood watching her till the sound of her steps died out on the way—firm, steady, unfaltering steps. Life and death, and mortal anguish, and wearing care, had done their worst upon old ’Lizabeth. She stood like a rock against them all.
She came down to the funeral on Friday, as she had herself appointed, and saw her sons laid in their grave, and again she was entreated to remain. But even little Lilias, whom her father brought forward to aid the pleadings of the others, could not move her. “Honey-sweet!” she said, with a tender light in her eyes; but she had more room for the children when her heart was full of living cares. It was empty now, and there was no room. A few weeks after, she was found dying peaceably in her bed, giving all kinds of directions to her children. “Abel will have your father’s watch, he aye wanted it from a baby—and Lily gets all my things, as is befitting. They will set her up for her wedding. And Dick, my little Dick, that has aye been the little one—who says I was not thinking of Dick? He’s been my prop and my right hand when a’ deserted me. The poor little house and the little bit of land, and a’ his mother has—who should they be for, but Dick?” Thus she died tranquilly, seeing them all round her; and all that was cruel and bitter in the lot of the Bampfyldes came to an end.
John Musgravesettled down without any commotion into his natural place in his father’s house. The old Squire himself mended from the day when Nello, very timid, but yet brave to repress the signs of his reluctance, was brought into his room. He played with the child as if he had been a child himself, and so grew better day by day, and got out of bed again, and save for a little dragging of one leg as he limped along, brought no external sign of his “stroke” out of his sick-room. But he wrote no more Monographs, studied no more. His life had come back to him as the Syrian lord in the Bible got back his health after his leprosy—“like the flesh of a little child.” The Squire recovered after a while the power of taking his part in a conversation, and looked more venerable than ever with his faded colour and subdued forces. But his real life was all with little Nello, who by and by got quite used to his grandfather, and lorded it over him as children so often do. When the next summer came, they went out together, the Squire generally in a wheeled chair, Nello walking, or riding by his side on the pony his grandpapa had given him. There was no doubt now as to who was heir. When Randolph came to Penninghame, after spending a day and a half in vain researches for Nello, life having become too exciting at that moment at the Castle to leave any one free to send word of the children’s safety—he found all doubt and notion of danger over for John—- and he himself established in his natural place. Whether the Squire had forgotten everything in his illness, or whether he had understood the story which Mary took care to repeat two or three times very distinctly by his bedside, no one knew. But he never objected to John’s presence, made no question about him—accepted him as if he had been always there. Absolutely as if there had been no breach in the household existence at all, the eldest son took his place; and that Nello was the heir was a thing beyond doubt in any reasonable mind. This actual settlement of all difficulties hadalready come about when Randolph came. His father took no notice of him, and John, who thought it was his brother’s fault that his little son had been so unkindly treated, found it difficult to afford Randolph any welcome. He did not, however, want any welcome in such circumstances. He stayed for a single night, feeling himself coldly looked upon by all. Mr. Pen, who spent half his time at the Castle, more than any one turned a cold shoulder upon his brother clergyman.
“You felt it necessary that the child should go to school quite as much as I did,” Randolph said, on the solitary occasion when the matter was discussed.
“Yes, but not to any school,” the Vicar said. “I would rather—— ” he paused for a sufficiently strong image, but it was hard to find; “I would rather—have got up at six o’clock every day, and sacrificed everything—rather than have exposed Nello to the life he had there;—and you who are a father yourself.”
“Yes; but my boy has neither a girl’s name nor a girl’s want of courage. He is not a baby that would flinch at the first rough word. I did not know the nature of the thing,” said Randolph, with a sneer. “I have no acquaintance with any but straightforward and manly ways.”
The Vicar followed him out in righteous wrath. He produced from his pocket a hideous piece of pink paper.
“Do you know who sent this?” he asked.
Randolph looked at it, taken aback, and tried to bluster forth an expression of wonder—
“I—how should I know?”
“What did you mean by it?” cried the gentle Vicar, in high excitement;—“did you think I did not know my duty? did you think I was a cold-blooded reptile like—like the man that sent that? Do you think it was in me to betray my brother? I know nothing bad enough for him who made such a suggestion. And he nearly gained his point. The devil knows what tools to work with. He works with the weakness of good people as well as with the strength of bad,” cried mild Mr. Pen, inspired for once in his life with righteous indignation. “Judas did it himself at least, bad as he was. He did not whisper treason in a man’s ears nor in a woman’s heart.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Randolph, with guilt in his face.
“Not all, no; fortunately you don’t know, nor any one else, the trouble you might have made. But no less, though it never came to pass, was it that traitor’s fault.”
“When you take to speaking riddles I give it up,” said Randolph, shrugging his shoulders.
But Mr. Pen was so hot in moral force that he was glad to get away. He slept one night under his father’s roof, no one giving him much attention, and then went away, never to return again; but went back to his believing wife, too good a fate, who smoothed him down and healed all his wounds. “My husband is like most people who struggle to do their duty,” she said. “His brother was very ungrateful, though Randolph had done so much for him. And the little boy, who had been dreadfully spoiled, ran away from the school when he had cost my husband so much trouble. And even his sister Mary showed him no kindness; that is the way when a man is so disinterested as Randolph, doing all he can for his own family, for theirrealgood.”
And this, at the end, came to be what Randolph himself thought.
Mrs. Pen, after coming home hysterical from Elfdale, made a clean breast to her husband, and showed him the telegram, and confessed all her apprehensions for him. What could a man do but forgive the folly or even wickedness done for his sweet sake? And Mrs. Pen went through a few dreadful hours, when in the morning John Musgrave came back from his night journey and the warrant was put in force. If they should hang him what would become of her? She always believed afterwards that it was her William’s intervention which had saved John, and she never believed in John’s innocence, let her husband say what he would. For Mrs. Pen said wisely, that wherever there is smoke there must be fire, and it was no use telling her that Lord Stanton had not been killed; for it was in the last edition of theFellside History, and therefore must be true.
When all was over Sir Henry and Lady Stanton made a formal visit of congratulation at Penninghame. Sir Henry toldJohn that it had been a painful necessity to issue the warrant, but that a man must do his duty, whatever it is; and as, under Providence, this was the means of making everything clear he could not regret that he had done it now. Lady Stanton said nothing, or next to nothing. She talked a little to Mary, making stray little remarks about the children, and drawing Nello to her side. Lilias she was afraid of, with those great eyes. Was that child to be Geoff’s wife? she thought. Ah! how much better, had he been the kind young husband who should have delivered her own Annie or Fanny. This little girl would want nothing of the kind; her father would watch over her, he would let no one meddle with her, not like a poor woman with a hard husband and stepdaughters. She trembled a little when she put her hand into John’s. She looked at him with moisture in her eyes.
“I have always believed in you, always hoped to see you here again,” she said.
“Come, Mary, the carriage is waiting,” said Sir Henry. He said after that this was all that was called for, and here the intercourse between the two houses dropped. Mary could not help “taking an interest” in John Musgrave still, but what did it matter? everybody took an interest in him now.
As for Geoff, he became, as he had a way of doing, the sun of the house at Penninghame; even the old Squire took notice of his kind, cheerful young face. He neglected Elfdale and his young cousins, and even Cousin Mary, whom he loved. But it was not to be supposed that John Musgrave would allow a series of love passages to go on indefinitely for years between his young neighbour and his daughter Lilias, as yet not quite thirteen years old. The young man was sent away after a most affecting parting, not to return for three years. Naturally, Lady Stanton rebelled much, she who had kept her son at home during all his life; but what could she do? Instead of struggling vainly she took the wiser part, and though it was a trial to tear herself from Stanton and all the servants, who were so kind, and the household which went upon wheels, upon velvet, and gave her no trouble, she made up her mind to it, and took her maid and Benson and Mr. Tritton and went“abroad” too. What is it to go abroad when a lady is middle-aged and has a grown-up son and such an establishment?—but she did it: “for I shall not have him very long!” she said, with a sigh.
Lilias was sixteen when Geoff came home. Can any one doubt that the child had grown up with her mind full of the young hero who had acted so great a part in her young life? When the old Squire died and Nello went to school, a very different school from Mr. Swan’s, the idea of “Mr. Geoff” became more and more her companion. It was not love, perhaps, in the ordinary meaning of the word; Lilias did not know what that meant. Half an elder brother, half an enchanted prince, more than half a hero of romance, he wove himself with every story and every poem that was written, to Lilias. He it was, and no Prince Ferdinand, whom Miranda thought so fair. It was he who slew all the dragons and giants, and delivered whole dungeons full of prisoners. Her girlhood was somewhat lonely, chiefly because of this soft mist of semi-betrothal which was about her. Not only was she already a woman, though a child, but a woman separated from others, a bride doubly virginal because he was absent to whom all her thoughts were due. “What if he should forget her?” Mary Musgrave would say, alarmed. She thought it neither safe nor right for the child, who was the beauty and flower of Penninghame, as she herself had been, though in so different a way. Mary now had settled down as the lady of Penninghame, as her brother was its lawful lord. John was not the kind of man to make a second marriage, even if, as his sister sometimes fancied, his first had but little satisfied his heart. But of this he said nothing, thankful to be able at the end to redeem some portion of the life thus swallowed up by one of those terrible, but happily rare, mistakes, which are no less wretched that they are half divine. He had all he wanted in his sister’s faithful companionship and in his children. There is no more attractive household than that in which, after the storms of life, a brother and sister set up peacefully together the old household gods, never dispersed, which were those of their youth. Mary was a little more careful, perhaps, of her niece, a little more afraid ofthe troubles in her way, than if she had been her daughter. She watched Lilias with great anxiety, and read between the lines of Geoff’s letters with vague scrutiny, looking always for indications of some change.
Lilias was sixteen in the end of October, the third after the previous events recorded here. She had grown to her full height, and her beauty had a dreamy, poetical touch from the circumstances, which greatly changed the natural expression appropriate to the liquid dark eyes and noble features she had from her mother and her mother’s mother. Her eyes were less brilliant than they would have been had they not looked so far away, but they were more sweet. Her brightness altogether was tempered and softened, and kept within that modesty of childhood to which her youthful age really belonged, though nature and life had developed her more than her years. Though she was grown up she kept many of her childish ways, and still sat, as Mary had always done, at the door of the old hall, now wonderfully decorated and restored, but yet the old hall still. The two ladies shared it between them for all their hours of leisure, but Mary had given up her seat at the door to the younger inhabitant, partly because she loved to see Lilias there with the sun upon her, partly because she herself began to feel the cool airs of the north less halcyon than of old. The books that Lilias carried with her were no longer fairy tales, but maturer enchantments of poetry. And there she sat absorbed in verse and lost to all meaner delights, on the eve of her birthday, a soft air ruffling the little curls on her forehead, the sun shining upon her uncovered head. Lilias loved the sun. She was not afraid of it nor her complexion, and the sun of October is not dangerous. She had a hand up to shade the book, which was too dazzling in the light, but nothing to keep the golden light from her. She sat warm and glorified in the long, slanting, dazzling rays.
Mary had heard a horse’s hoofs, and, being a little restless, came forward softly from her seat behind to see who it was; but Lilias, lost in the poetry and the sunshine, heard nothing.