Erema; Or, My Father's Sin Part 42

"Whose son? Lord Castlewood's?"

"Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure; the son of the man who did the likeness. Is it the vellum and the stuff upon it that has so upset your mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been mean to do otherwise. But show it to no one else, my dear, except your cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it, though he will laugh at it as I do. Trumpery of that sort! Let them produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they ever have shot that raffish old lord--I beg pardon, my dear--your highly respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep your pluck up."

"I never can thank you enough," I replied, "for such inspiriting counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day. And I have had such a letter from America!"

Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea at the furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the arm of the Major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but was useful still to let other people know, both in this way and that, what he thought of them. And now it let me know that he pitied me.

This kindness from so old a soldier made me partial to him. He had taken an age to understand me, because my father was out of the army almost before I was born, and therefore I had no traditions. Also, from want of drilling, I had been awkward to this officer, and sometimes mutinous, and sometimes a coward. All that, however, he forgave me when he saw me so downhearted; and while I was striving to repress all signs, the quivering of my lips perhaps suggested thoughts of kissing. Whereupon he kissed my forehead with nice dry lips, and told me not to be at all afraid.

"How many times have you been brave?" he inquired, to set me counting, knowing from all his own children, perhaps, that nothing stops futile tears and the waste of sobs like prompt arithmetic. "Six, if not seven, times you have displayed considerable valor. Are you going to fall away through some wretched imagination of your own? Now don't stop to argue--time will not allow it. I have put Cosmopolitan Jack as well upon the track of Captain Brown. I have not told you half of what I could tell, and what I am doing; but never mind, never mind; it is better that you should not know too much, my dear. Young minds, from their want of knowledge of the world, are inclined to become uneasy. Now go to bed and sleep soundly, Erema, for we have lots to do to-morrow, and you have had a most worrying day to-day. To-morrow, of course, you must come with me to Paris. You can parleyvoo better than I can."

However, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind, for when he came back in the morning, and while he was fidgeting and hurrying me, and vowing that we should lose the tidal train, a letter from Bruntsea was put into my hand. I saw Mrs. Price's clear writing, followed by good Aunt Mary's crooked lines, and knew that the latter must have received it too late to be sent by her messenger. In few words it told me that if I wished to see my cousin alive, the only chance was to start immediately.

Shock and self-reproach and wonder came (as usual) before grief, which always means to stay, and waits to get its mourning ready. I loved and respected my cousin more deeply than any one living, save Uncle Sam; and now to lose them both at once seemed much too dreadful to be true.

There was no time to think. I took the Major's cab, and hurried off to Paddington, leaving him to catch his tidal train.

Alas! when I got to Castlewood, there was but a house of mourning!

Faithful Stixon's eyes were dim, and he pointed upward and said, "Hus.h.!.+" I entered with great awe, and asked, "How long?" And he said, "Four-and-twenty hours now; and a more peacefuller end was never seen, and to lament was sinful; but he was blessed if he could help it." I told him, through my tears, that this was greatly to his credit, and he must not crush fine feelings, which are an honor to our nature. And he said that I was mistress now, and must order him to my liking.

I asked him to send Mrs. Price to me, if she was not too busy; and he answered that he believed her to be a very good soul, and handy. And if he ever had been thought to speak in a sense disparis.h.i.+ng of her, such things should not be borne in mind, with great afflictions over us. Mrs.

Price, hearing that I was come, already was on her way to me, and now glanced at the door for Mr. Stixon to depart, in a manner past misunderstanding.

"He gives himself such airs!" she said; "sometimes one would think--but I will not trouble you now with that, Miss Castlewood, or Lady Castlewood--which do you please to be called, miss? They say that the barony goes on, when there is no more Viscount."

"I please to be called 'Miss Castlewood,' even if I have any right to be called that. But don't let us talk of such trifles now. I wish to hear only of my cousin."

"Well, you know, ma'am, what a sufferer he has been for years. If ever an angel had pains all over, and one leg compulsory of a walking-stick, that angel was his late lords.h.i.+p. He would stand up and look at one, and give orders in that beautiful silvery voice of his, just as if he was lying on a bed of down. And never a twitch, nor a hitch in his face, nor his words, nor any other part of him. I a.s.sure you, miss, that I have been quite amazed and overwhelmed with interest while looking at his poor legs, and thinking--"

"I can quite enter into it. I have felt the same. But please to come to what has happened lately."

"The very thing I was at the point of doing. Then last Sunday, G.o.d alone knows why, the pain did not come on at all. For the first time for seven years or more the pain forgot the time-piece. His lords.h.i.+p thought that the clock was wrong; but waited with his usual patience, though missing it from the length of custom, instead of being happy. But when it was come to an hour too late for the proper attack of the enemy, his lords.h.i.+p sent orders for Stixon's boy to take a good horse and ride to Pangbourne for a highly respectable lawyer. There was no time to fetch Mr. Spines, you see, miss, the proper solicitor, who lives in London.

The gentleman from Pangbourne was here by eight o'clock; and then and there his lords.h.i.+p made his will, to supersede all other wills. He put it more clearly, the lawyer said, than he himself could have put it, but not, of course, in such legal words, but doubtless far more beautiful.

n.o.body in the house was forgotten; and the rule of law being, it seems, that those with best cause to remember must not witness, two of the tenants were sent for, and wrote down their names legitimate. And then his lords.h.i.+p lay back and smiled, and said, 'I shall have no more pain.'

"All that night and three days more he slept as sound as a little child, to make up for so many years. We called two doctors in; but they only whispered and looked dismal, and told us to have hot water ready at any hour of the day or night. n.o.body loved him as I did, miss, from seeing so much of his troubles and miraculous way of bearing them; and I sat by the hour and hour, and watched him, trusting no paid nurses.

"It must have been eight o'clock on Wednesday morning--what is to-day?

Oh, Friday--then Thursday morning it must have been, when the clouds opened up in the east, and the light of the sun was on the window-sill, not glaring or staring, but playing about, with patterns of leaves between it; and I went to screen it from his poor white face; but he opened his eyes, as if he had been half awake, half dreaming, and he tried to lift one of his thin, thin hands to tell me not to do it. So I let the curtain stay as it was, and crept back, and asked, very softly, 'Will your lords.h.i.+p have some breakfast?'

"He did not seem to comprehend me, but only watched the window; and if ever a blessed face there was, looking toward heaven's glory, his lords.h.i.+p had it, so that I could scarcely keep from sobbing. For I never had seen any living body die, but knew that it must be so. He heard me catching my breath, perhaps, or at any rate he looked at me; and the poor angel knew that I was a woman; and being full of high respect, as he always was for females--in spite of the way they had served him--it became apparent to his mind that the pearl b.u.t.ton of his neck was open, as ordered by the doctors. And he tried to lift his hand to do it; and then he tried to turn away, but could not manage either. Poor dear! the only movement he could make was to a better world.

"Then I drew the sheet across his chest, and he gave me a little smile of thanks, and perhaps he knew whose hand it was. But the look of his kind soft eyes was flickering--not steady, I mean, miss--but glancing and stopping and going astray, as drops of rain do on the window-gla.s.s.

But I could not endure to examine him much; at such a holy time I felt that to watch death was unholy.

"Perhaps I ought to have rung the bell for others to be present. But his lords.h.i.+p was always shy, you know, miss; and with none of his kindred left, and no wife to say 'good-by' to him, right or wrong I resolved alone to see him depart to his everlasting rest. And people may talk about hirelings, but I think n.o.body loved him as I did."

Here Mrs. Price broke fairly down, and I could not help admiring her.

To a faithful servant's humility and duty she had added a woman's pure attachment to one more gifted than herself, and ruined for life by her own s.e.x. But she fell away frightened and ashamed beneath my look, as if I had caught her in sacrilege.

"Well, miss, we all must come and go," she began again, rather clumsily; "and, good and great as he was, his lords.h.i.+p has left few to mourn for him. Only the birds and beasts and animals that he was so good to; they will miss him, if men don't. There came one of his favorite pigeons, white as snow all over, and sat on the sill of the window, and cooed, and arched up its neck for his fingers. And he tried to put his fingers out, but they were ice already. Whether that or something else brought home his thoughts, who knows, miss? but he seemed to mix the pigeon up with some of his own experience.

"'Say that I have forgiven her, if ever she did harm to me,' he whispered, without moving lips. 'Times and times, when I was young, I was not always steady;' and then he seemed to wander in his mind among old places; and he would have laughed at something if his voice had been sufficient.

"'Bitter grief and pain shall never come again,' he seemed to breathe, with a calm, soft smile, like a child with its rhyme about the rain when the sun breaks out; and sure enough, the sun upon the quilt above his heart was s.h.i.+ning, as if there could be no more clouds. Then he whispered a few short words to the Lord, more in the way of thanks than prayer, and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord, or with some good spirit soothing them. And when or how his sleep pa.s.sed from this world into the other there was scarcely the flutter of a nerve to show.

There he lies, like an image of happiness. Will you come and see him?"

I followed her to the bedroom, and am very glad that I did so; for it showed me the bliss of a good man's rest, and took away my fear of death.

CHAPTER LI

LIFE SINISTER

When business and the little cares of earthly life awoke again, every one told me (to my great surprise and no small terror at first, but soon to increasing acquiescence) that I was now the mistress of the fair estates of Castlewood, and, the male line being extinct, might claim the barony, if so pleased me; for that, upon default of male heirs, descended by the spindle. And as to the property, with or without any will of the late Lord Castlewood, the greater part would descend to me under unbarred settlement, which he was not known to have meddled with.

On the contrary, he confirmed by his last will the settlement--which they told me was quite needless--and left me all that he had to leave, except about a thousand pounds distributed in legacies. A private letter to me was sealed up with his will, which, of course, it would not behoove me to make public. But thus much--since our family history is, alas! so notorious--in duty to him I should declare. He begged me, if his poor lost wife--of whom he had never spoken to me--should re-appear and need it, to pay her a certain yearly sum, which I thought a great deal too much for her, but resolved to obey him exactly.

Neither the will nor the letter contained any reference to my grandfather, or the possibility of an adverse claim. I could not, however, be quit of deep uneasiness and anxiety, but stanchly determined that every acre should vanish in folds of "the long robe" rather than pa.s.s to a crafty villain who had robbed me of all my kindred. My hatred of that man deepened vastly, as he became less abstract, while my terror decreased in proportion. I began to think that, instead of being the reckless fiend I had taken him for, he was only a low, plotting, cold-blooded rogue, without even courage to save him. By this time he must have heard all about me, my pursuit of him, and my presence here--then why not come and shoot me, just as he shot my grandfather?

The idea of this was unwelcome; still, I felt no sort of grat.i.tude, but rather a lofty contempt toward him for not having spirit to try it.

In Shoxford church-yard he had expressed (if s.e.xton Rigg was not then deceived) an unholy wish to have me there, at the feet of my brothers and sisters. Also he had tried to get hold of me--doubtless with a view to my quietude--when I was too young to defend myself, and left at haphazard in a lawless land. What was the reason, if his mind was still the same, for ceasing to follow me now? Was I to be treated with contempt as one who had tried her best and could do nothing, as a feeble creature whose movements were not even worth inquiry? Anger at such an idea began to supersede fear, as my spirits returned.

Meanwhile Major Hockin was making no sign as to what had befallen him in Paris, or what Cosmopolitan Jack was about. But, strangely enough, he had sent me a letter from Bruntsea instead of Paris, and addressed in grand style to no less a person than "The right honorable Baroness Castlewood"--a t.i.tle which I had resolved, for the present, neither to claim nor acknowledge. In that letter the Major mingled a pennyweight of condolence with more congratulation than the post could carry for the largest stamp yet invented. His habit of mind was to magnify things; and he magnified my small grandeur, and seemed to think nothing else worthy of mention.

Through love of the good kind cousin I had lost, even more than through common and comely respect toward the late head of the family, I felt it impossible to proceed, for the present, with any inquiries, but left the next move to the other side. And the other side made it, in a manner such as I never even dreamed of.

About three weeks after I became, in that sad way, the mistress, escaping one day from lawyers and agents, who held me in dreary interview, with long computations of this and of that, and formalities almost endless, I went, for a breath of good earnest fresh air, beyond precinct of garden or shrubbery. To me these seemed in mild weather to temper and humanize the wind too strictly, and take the wild spirit out of it; and now, for the turn of the moment, no wind could be too rough to tumble in. After long months of hard trouble, and worry, and fear, and sad shame, and deep sorrow, the natural spring of clear youth into air and freedom set me upward. For the nonce there was nothing upon my selfish self to keep it downward; troubles were bubbles, and grief a low thief, and reason almost treason. I drank the fine fountain of air unsullied, and the golden light stamped with the royalty of sun.

Hilarious moments are but short, and soon cold sense comes back again.

Already I began to feel ashamed of young life's selfish outburst, and the vehement spring of mere bodily health. On this account I sat down sadly in a little cove of hill, whereto the soft breeze from the river came up, with a tone of wavelets, and a sprightly water-gleam. And here, in fern and yellow gra.s.s and tufted bights of bottom growth, the wind made entry for the sun, and they played with one another.

Besting here, and thinking, with my face between my hands, I wondered what would be the end. Nothing seemed secure or certain, nothing even steady or amenable to foresight. Even guess-work or the wider cast of dreams was always wrong. To-day the hills and valleys, and the glorious woods of wreathen gold, bright garnet, and deep amethyst, even that blue river yet unvexed by autumn's turbulence, and bordered with green pasture of a thousand sheep and cattle--to-day they all were mine (so far as mortal can hold owners.h.i.+p)--to-morrow, not a stick, or twig, or blade of gra.s.s, or fallen leaf, but might call me a trespa.s.ser. To see them while they still were mine, and to regard them humbly, I rose and took my black hat off--a black hat trimmed with mourning gray. Then turning round, I met a gaze, the wildest, darkest, and most awful ever fixed on human face.

"Who are you? What do you want here?" I faltered forth, while shrinking back for flight, yet dreading or unable to withdraw my gaze from his.

The hollow ground barred all escape; my own land was a pit for me, and I must face this horror out. Here, afar from house or refuge, hand of help, or eye of witness, front to front I must encounter this atrocious murderer.

For moments, which were ages to me, he stood there without a word; and daring not to take my eyes from his, lest he should leap at me, I had no power (except of instinct), and could form no thought of him, for mortal fear fell over me. If he would only speak, would only move his lips, or any thing!

"The Baroness is not brave," he said at last, as if reproachfully; "but she need have no fear now of me. Does her ladys.h.i.+p happen to know who I am?"

"The man who murdered my grandfather."

"Yes, if you put a false color on events. The man who punished a miscreant, according to the truer light. But I am not here to argue points. I intend to propose a bargain. Once for all, I will not harm you. Try to listen calmly. Your father behaved like a man to me, and I will be no worse to you. The state of the law in this country is such that I am forced to carry fire-arms. Will it conduce to your peace of mind if I place myself at your mercy?"

I tried to answer; but my heart was beating so that no voice came, only a flutter in my trembling throat. Wrath with myself for want of courage wrestled in vain with pale, abject fear. The hand which offered me the pistol seemed to my dazed eyes crimson still with the blood of my grandfather.

"You will not take it? Very well; it lies here at your service. If your father's daughter likes to shoot me, from one point of view it will be just; and but for one reason, I care not. Don't look at me with pity, if you please. For what I have done I feel no remorse, no shadow of repentance. It was the best action of my life. But time will fail, unless you call upon your courage speedily. None of your family lack that; and I know that you possess it. Call your spirit up, my dear."