The Curse of Carne's Hold Part 36

"You shall judge for yourself, Mrs. Powlett, if you can find time to sit down and listen, as well as Ruth."

"I can find time for that," Hesba said, "though it isn't often as I sits down till the tea is cleared away and Hiram has lit his pipe."

Mary sat down facing the fire, with Ruth in an arm-chair on one side of her, and Mrs. Powlett stiff and upright on a hard settle on the other.

Then she began to tell the story, first saying a few words to let her hearers know of the fate of women who fell into the hands of the Kaffirs. Then she began with the story of her journey down from King Williamstown, the sudden attack by natives, and how after seeing her father fall she was carried off. Then she told, what she had never told before, of the hideous tortures of the other two women, part of which she was compelled to witness, and how she was told that she was to be preserved as a present to Macomo. Then she described the dreary journey.

"I had only one hope," she said, "and it was so faint that it could not be called a hope; but there was one man in the colony who somehow I felt sure would, if he knew of my danger, try to rescue me. He had once before come to our aid when our house was attacked by Kaffirs, and in a few minutes our fate would have been sealed had he not arrived. But for aught I knew he was a hundred miles away, and what could he do against the three hundred natives who were with me? Still, I had a little ray of hope, the faintest, tiniest ray, until we entered the Amatolas----they are strong steep hills covered with forest and bush, and are the stronghold of the Kaffirs, and I knew that there were about twenty thousand natives gathered there. Then I hoped no longer. I felt that my fate was sealed, and my only wish and my only longing was to obtain a knife or a spear, and to kill myself."

Then Mary described the journey through the forest to the kraal, the long hours she had sat waiting for her fate with every movement watched by the Kaffir women, and her sensations when she heard the message in English. Then she described her rescue from the kraal, her flight through the woods, her concealment in the cave, her escape from the Amatolas, the ride with the trooper holding her on his saddle, and the final dash through the Kaffirs.

Her hearers had thrown in many interjections of horror and pity, loud on the part of Hesba, mere murmurs on that of Ruth, who had taken Mary's hand in hers, but the sympathetic pressure told more than words.

"And you shot four of them, Miss Armstrong!" Hesba e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, in wide-eyed astonishment. "To think that a young girl like you should have the death of four men on her hands! I don't say as it's unchristian, because Christians are not forbidden to fight for their lives, but it does seem downright awful!"

"It has never troubled me for a single moment," Mary said. "They tried to kill me, and I killed them. That is the light I saw it in, and so would you if you had been living in the colony."

"But you have not finished your story," Ruth said, earnestly. "Surely that is not the end of it!"

"No; my father recovered from his wound, and so did the soldier who saved me, and as soon as my father was able to travel, he and I went down to the coast and came home."

"That cannot be all," Ruth whispered; "there must be something more to tell, Mary."

"I will tell you another time, Ruth," Mary said, in equally low tones, and then rising, put on her hat again, said good-bye, and went out.

"Did you ever, Ruth?" Hesba Powlett exclaimed as the door closed. "I never did hear such a story in all my life. And to think of her shooting four men! It quite made my flesh creep; didn't it yours?"

"There were other parts of the story that made my flesh creep a great deal more, mother."

"Yes, it was terrible! And she didn't say a single word in praise of what the soldier had done for her. Now that seems to me downright ungrateful, and not at all what I should have thought of Miss Armstrong."

"I suppose she thought, mother, that there was no occasion to express her opinion of his bravery or to mention her grat.i.tude. The whole story seemed to me a cry of praise and a hymn of grat.i.tude."

"Lord, Ruth, what fancies you do take in your head, to be sure! I never did hear such expressions!"

Two days pa.s.sed without Ruth going up to the Armstrongs'; on the third day Mary again went down.

"Well, Ruth, as you have not been to see me, I have come to see you again."

"I was coming up this afternoon. If you don't mind, I will go back with you now, instead of your staying here. We are quieter there, you know.

Somehow, one cannot think or talk when people come in and out of the room every two or three minutes."

"I quite agree with you, Ruth, and, if you don't mind my saying so, I would very much rather have you all to myself."

The two girls accordingly went back to the cottage. Mary, who was rather an industrious needlewoman, brought out a basket of work. Ruth, who for a long time had scarcely taken up a needle, sat with her hands before her.

When two people intend to have a serious conversation with each other, they generally steer wide of the subject at first, and the present was no exception.

"I think it would be better for you, Ruth, to occupy yourself with work a little, as I do."

"I used to be fond of work," Ruth replied, "but I don't seem to be able to give my attention to it now. I begin, and before I have done twenty st.i.tches, somehow or other my thoughts seem to go away, and by the end of the morning the first twenty st.i.tches are all I have done."

"But you oughtn't to think so much, Ruth. It is bad for any one to be always thinking."

"Yes, but I can't help it. I have so much to think about, and it gets worse instead of better. Now, after what you said to me the other night, I don't know what to do. It seemed right before. I did not think I was doing much harm in keeping silence; now I see I have been, oh, so wrong!" and she twined her fingers in and out as if suffering bodily pain.

"My poor Ruth!" Mary said, coming over to her and kneeling down by her side. "I think I know what is troubling you."

The girl shook her head.

"Yes, dear, I am almost sure you have known something all along that would have proved Captain Mervyn was innocent, and you have not said it."

Ruth Powlett did not speak for a minute or two, then she said, slowly:

"I do not know how you have guessed it, Mary. No one else even seems to have thought of it. But, yes, that is it, and I do so want some one to advise me what to do. I see now I have been very wicked. For a long time I have been fighting against myself. I have tried so hard to persuade myself that I had not done much harm, because Captain Mervyn was acquitted. I have really known that I was wrong, but I never thought how wrong until you spoke to me."

"Wait, Ruth," Mary said; "before you tell me your secret I must tell you mine. It would not be fair for you to tell me without knowing that. You remember the story I was telling you about my being carried off?"

A fresh interest came into Ruth's face.

"Yes," she said, "and you promised you would tell me the rest another time. I thought you meant, of course, you would tell me that when this war out there is over, you would some day marry the soldier who has done so much for you."

"I was going to tell you, Ruth, why I am not going to marry him."

"Oh, I thought you would be sure to," Ruth said in a tone of deep disappointment. "It seemed to me that it was sure to be so. I thought a man would never have risked so much for a woman unless he loved her."

"He did love me, Ruth, and I loved him. I don't think I made any secret of it. Somehow it seemed to me that he had a right to me, and I was surprised when the time went on and he didn't ask me. When the last day came before he was to march away to fight again, I think that if he had not spoken I should have done so. Do not think me unmaidenly, Ruth, but he was only a sergeant and I was a rich girl, for my father is a great deal better off than he seems to be, and I thought that perhaps some foolish sort of pride held him back, for I was quite sure that he loved me. But he spoke first. He told me that he loved me, but could never ask me to be his wife; that he could never marry, but he must go through the world alone to the end of his life."

"Oh, Mary, how terrible!" Ruth said, pitifully, "how terrible! Was he married before, then?"

"No, Ruth, it was worse than that; there was a great shadow over his life; he had been tried for murder, and though he had been acquitted, the stigma was still upon him. Go where he would he might be recognised and pointed out as a murderer; therefore, unless the truth was some day known and his name cleared, no woman could ever be his wife."

Ruth had given a little gasp as Mary Armstrong began, then she sat rigid and immovable.

"It was Captain Mervyn," she said, at last, in a low whisper.

"Yes, Ruth. Sergeant Blunt was Captain Mervyn; he had changed his name, and gone out there to hide himself, but even there he had already been recognised; and, as he said--for I pleaded hard, Ruth, to be allowed to share his exile--go where he would, bury himself in what out-of-the-way corner he might, sooner or later some one would know him, and this story would rise up against him, and, much as he loved me--all the more, perhaps, because he loved me so much--he would never suffer me to be pointed at as the wife of a murderer."

"You shall not be," Ruth said, more firmly than she had before spoken.

"You shall not be, Mary. I can clear him, and I will."

It was Mary Armstrong's turn to break down now. The goal had been reached, Ronald Mervyn would be cleared; and she threw her arms round Ruth and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears. It was some time before the girls were sufficiently composed to renew the conversation.

"First of all, I must tell you, Mary," Ruth began, "that you may not think me more wicked than I am, that I would never have let Captain Mervyn suffer the penalty of another's crime. Against the wish, almost in the face of the orders of the doctor, I remained in court all through the trial, holding in my hand the proof of Captain Mervyn's innocence, and had the verdict been 'guilty' I was ready to rush forward and prove that he was innocent. I do not think that all that you suffered when you were in the hands of the Kaffirs was worse than I suffered then. I saw before me the uproar in court: the eyes that would be all fixed upon me; the way that the judge and the counsel would blame me for having so long kept silence; the reproach that I should meet with when I returned home; the shame of my dear old father; the way in which every soul in the village would turn against me; but I would have dared it all rather than that one man should suffer for the sin of another. And now, having told you this first, so that you should not think too hardly of me, I will tell you all."

Then Ruth told her of her girlish love for George Forester; how she had clung to him through evil report, and in spite of the wishes of her father and mother, but how at last the incident of the affray with the gamekeepers had opened her eyes to the fact that he was altogether reckless and wild, and that she could never trust her happiness to him.

She told how Margaret Carne had spoken to her about it, and how she had promised she would give him up; then she told of that meeting on the road on the way to church; his pa.s.sionate anger against herself; the threats he had uttered against Miss Carne for her interference, and the way in which he had a.s.saulted her.

"I firmly believe," Ruth said, "he would have murdered me had he not heard people coming along the road." Then she told how she found the open knife stained with blood at Margaret Carne's bedside, and how she had hidden it. "I did not do it because I loved him still, Mary," she said. "My love seemed to have been killed. I had given him up before, and the attack he made upon me had shown me clearly how violent he was, and what an escape I had had; but I had loved him as a boy, and it was the remembrance of my girlish love, and not any love I then had, that sealed my lips; but even this would not have silenced me, I think, had it not been for the sake of his father. The old man had always been very, very kind to me, and the disgrace of his son being found guilty of this crime would have killed him. I can say, honestly, it was this that chiefly influenced me in deciding to s.h.i.+eld him. As to Captain Mervyn, I was, as I told you, determined that though I would keep silent if he were acquitted, I would save him if he were found guilty. I never thought for a moment that acquittal would not clear him. It seemed to me that the trouble that had fallen on him was thoroughly deserved for the way in which he had spoken to Miss Carne; but I thought when he was acquitted he would take his place in his regiment again, and be none the worse for what had happened. It was only when I found that he had left the regiment, and when Mrs. Mervyn and her daughters shut up the house and went to live far away, that I began to trouble much. I saw now how wicked I had been, though I would never quite own it even to myself. I would have told then, but I did not know who to tell it to, or what good it could do if told. Mr. Forester was dead now, and the truth could not hurt him. George Forester had gone away, and would never come back; you know they found a verdict of wilful murder against him for killing the keeper. Somehow it seemed too late either to do good or harm. Every one had gone. Why should I say anything, and bring grief and trouble on my father and mother, and make the whole valley despise me? It has been dreadful," she said, wanly. "You cannot tell how dreadful. Ever since you came here and tried to make a friend of me, I have been fighting a battle with myself. It was not right that you should like me--it was not right that any one should like me--and I felt at last that I must tell you; you first, and then every one. Now after what you have told me it will not be so hard. Of course I shall suffer, and my father will suffer; but it will do good and make you and Captain Mervyn happy for the truth to be known, and so I shall be able to brave it all much better than I should otherwise have done. Who shall I go to first?"