THE afternoon 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 away from 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, where they were? 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 misfortune was 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 now that 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 of its 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 simplest words. 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—and shook 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 in his throat 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 cannot call 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 peace about 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 those around 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!”