ON that 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, and desœuvré. 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 on you?”
“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 the bairns 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 hear she’s away, 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, and she’s away 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’s given 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 hear there’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 sight nor 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 the effusion of 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 the Squire’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 no one 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 the poor 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!”