CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
GEOFF took 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 sudden effusion, “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 about me,” 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 to take 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 know everything. 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 for them. 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 evidently something 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 far from 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 not me he 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—you here?—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.