CHAPTER XLVI
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
“Ah, well, as the days and the weeks passed I got mortal tired of waiting for him to own my girl his wife, and take her to the great house with blowing of trumpets, and waving of banners, and flaunting of flags, and prancing of steeds, like I had heard of. What was the use of my girl being the wife of a great lord, if she had to wear a linsey gown, and sit in the hut and spin all day long while I was away to the henhouse? Why, none at all.
“Oh, bairn, it is such a help to my poor heart telling you all this. And you believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe every word you say—tell me more,” earnestly replied Wynnette.
“At long last my lady countess and her young lady daughters went up to London town. And now I thought, while they are gone, my lord will take his wife hame to the great house; but he didn’t, bairn; he didn’t. Oh, he didn’t. He was abroad somewhere, to France, maybe, or to Paris, or some other furrin country thereaway. And my lass gave herself up to weeping, and never showed herself abroad, but stayed in the hut. One day I laid a baby boy in her arms and told her to be comforted, for that her son was the little Lord Glennon and the heir to the Earldom of Enderby.
“And then I had to tell my neighbors the secret, for I could not bear they should think ill o’ my ain lass. But nane o’ them would believe me. Not one. They laughed me to scorn—me and my lass. It is an old tale—oh, such an old tale, such a common old tale! Only it comes hame when it’s one’s ain bairn.
“One day my lord came hame and heard the report, and a fine passion he was in with my lass and me. He denied her and her child. He pretended it was Andy, the stableboy, she had married. And he scorned her, and threatened to turn us both out of the hut if we ever so much as named his name again.
“Oh, but he was the devil of the whole world!
“After that, in many long nights that my lass and I lay awake, we talked, and I got to know why the great earl had married my beauty and angel of the whole world. First he tried to win her love without her hand; but my girl was good and firm; and then he grew so mad for her love that he took her before a priest and married her.
“One day we did hear that the earl was to wed the duke’s daughter, and all the cottagers said I was a mad crone to think my lord had stooped to my lass. Ah, my lass! She was fading away before my very eyes. But not fast enough for my lord.
“One day there was a fair at Enderby Town, and all the laborers on the estate and all the servants at the castle had a holiday to go to the fair. All went but me and my lass. We ne’er left hame in those days. We could no bear that any should look on us and scorn us.
“So that day I left my lass spinning at the hut door, and the baby was sleeping in the basket by her side, and I went to my duty in the hen-houses. I had the old nests to clean out and fresh straw to put in them. I got done about twelve of the clock and come hame.
“But my girl was not in the house, nor the babe. I had no misgiving. I went in and waited for her. But she came no more. She never came again. When it grew dark I began to be so uneasy that I went out to look for her, but could no find her. There was no one as I could ask; all the world was gone to the fair, and nane would be hame till late, maybe not till morning.
“Well, bairn, when I had walked till my limbs were ready to sink under me I went hame and laid down, just as I was, on the outside of my bed. I was not asleep. Nay, bairnie, I was not asleep. I did no dream what followed. I saw it. My eyes were shut and all the world was still; for it was long after midnight, and even drawing near the morning; but still it was pitch-dark, when—no, I wasn’t asleep, and I didn’t dream it—when I felt a light through my shut eyelids. I opened them and saw the room was full of light that did not come from sun, or moon, or star, or candle, or lamp, or fire, but from a bright form that stood in the midst of the place and beckoned me to come to it.
“In an awe that was not a fright, I got up and went to it and said ‘Phebe!’ for I knew it was my lass that stood there, with her child in her arms, and clothed, not in the white raiment of the blest, but in what I thought was lovelier, a clear, soft, rosy gown that fell from her shoulders down to her feet. She had no crown on her head, but her silky, yellow hair streamed down around her form like sunbeams. I knew she was a spirit.
“‘Phebe!’ I said again—‘Phebe!’ She did not speak, but holding her child on her right arm, she raised her left hand and beckoned me, and pointed to the door, and went out. I followed her. She led me by ways I had never gone before, but have gone every year since that night. The same way I took you to-night, my bairn. The secret passage to the deep caverns under the foundations of the castle, the only way to them except through the trapdoor and shaft that runs two hundred feet down in a straight line—a way that is now known to none but me. Even you could no find it again. She led me through the secret passage and down the many, many steps cut in the solid rock, down, down, down, her light making the steep path light before me until we reached the Dungeon of the Dark Death—and even that she lighted up.
“She led me to a spot where her dead body lay on the ground, just under the bottom of the shaft, that reached only to the ceiling or roof above. Her body lay with the body of her babe, just as if they both had dropped down there and fallen asleep. I knew they were dead. I knew every bone in both was broken, though that did not appear on the outside. It was under where they struck the ground that the horror of death was. I knew also, as if I had seen it all, how she had died—how she had been entrapped to her sudden death—how she had not even suffered. There had been a swift fall, a shock, nothing, and then a wonderful coming to life in a new form.
“I tell you, lass, it was no dream, no dream! but a real seeing. And it was wonderful to stand there by the two crushed, dead bodies and see the two living souls. I thought of the chrysalis and the butterfly, the worm and the moth, the eggshell and the bird, as I stood there between life and death, and seeing both.
“And without any speech at all, my lass made me know how she had been betrayed to death—how, every one being gone off the place, and she alone in her hut, my lord had come to her and pretended to make it all up with her, and had asked her to walk with him in the hall of the old castle. And she had gone. And they walked up and down, up and down, until suddenly, when she was passing with her babe over the trapdoor they had passed so many times, he suddenly stepped back, the door fell in, and she shot down, struck the ground two hundred feet below, and knew no more until she woke up in her new form—not dead, but living, never more to die.
“Presently she beckoned to me again, and walking before me, a form of rosy light, led me back again by the way we had come, up, up, up, to the upper air again. Nor did she leave me until we were back in the hut. She waved her arm and signed for me to lie down on the bed; and I minded her and did what she said. Then she stood by my bed waving her hand to and fro, to and fro, until I went to sleep. And I slept so deep and so long that it was broad daylight, with the sun shining in at the bare window, when I waked.
“No, it was no dream, bairn. Soon as I waked I minded all that had passed in the night, and I knowed it was no dream.
“I went no more out that day. At noon my lord came to the hut, the first time he had come for many a day. And he asked me, in a careless way:
“‘Where is that wench of yours, goody?’ And I looked him straight in the face, and answered him:
“‘Her body and her babe’s lie crushed to death on the stone floor of the deep dungeon where you cast her down; but she and her child—they are in Paradise.’
“He turned white as a sheet and he reeled in his saddle; but he quickly put on a bold face and said:
“‘You are a mad old beast, and before twenty-four hours are over your head you shall be committed to the County Lunatic Asylum.’
“And with that he struck spurs into his horse and dashed wildly away.
“Not too often, lass, does punishment follow fast on crime, but it did in this case. He dashed wildly off in a state of mind, I reckon, that made him unable to guide his young horse as he ought.
“Half an hour later he was carried hame to the castle on a shutter. The horse had thrown him and broken his neck.
“The title and estates, they went to a distant cousin, great-grandfather of the present Earl Francis. Earl Godfrey was good to me—he and his children and his children’s children have been good to me—always good to me, although they call me mad.
“When my girl was missed and the trapdoor was found open, they had it that she had trodden on it and it had gin way under her weight, and her death was a accident and nobody to blame. They wouldn’t listen to me—no one word. They said I was a poor, harmless creetur, crazed by the loss of my lass. They got a windlass and great chains and ropes, and then let down men and they took up my birds’ broken shells and gave them Christian burial.
“Everybody was kind to me, only they wouldn’t believe me. They said I was mad. They would have it as it was the poor stableboy as wronged my girl. And now I hear, after more than fifty years, some un have made another story and got it into a book, how the stableboy killed my girl and threw her body down the shaft, and was hanged for it at Carlisle. All lies, bairn! All lies! My story is the only true one.”
“I believe you,” said Wynnette.