Elster's Folly Part 83

This story he had told Pike at the time, with one reserve--he persisted that he had not _seen_, only heard. Pike saw that the boy was still not telling the whole truth, and suspected he was screening Lord Hartledon--he who now stood before him. Mr. Ripper's logic tended to the belief that he could not be punished if he stuck to the avowal of having seen nothing. He had only heard the cries; and when Pike asked if they were cries as if he were being a.s.saulted, the boy evasively answered "happen they were." Another little item he suppressed: that he found the purse at the bottom of the skiff, after he got out of the mill, and appropriated it to himself; and when he had fairly done that, he grew more afraid of having done it than of all the rest. The money he secreted, using it when he dared, a sixpence at a time; the case, with its papers, he buried in the spot where his master afterwards found it.

With all this upon the young man's conscience, no wonder he was a little confused and contradictory in his statements to Pike: no wonder he fancied the ghost of the man he could have saved and did not, might now and then be hovering about him. Pike learned the real truth at last; and a compunction had come over him, now that he was dying, for having doubted Lord Hartledon.

"My lord, I can only ask you to forgive me. I ought to have known you better. But things seemed to corroborate it so: I've heard people say the new lord was as a man who had some great care upon him. Oh, I was a fool!"

"At any rate it was not _that_ care, Pike; I would have saved my brother's life with my own, had I been at hand to do it. As to Ripper--I shall never bear to look upon him again."

"He's gone away," said Pike.

"Where has he gone?"

"The miller turned him off for idleness, and he's gone away, n.o.body knows where, to get work: I don't suppose he'll ever come back again. This is the real truth of the matter as it occurred, my lord; and there's no more behind it. Ripper has now told all he knows, just as fully as if he had been put to torture."

Lord Hartledon remained with Pike some time longer, soothing the man as much as it was in his power and kindly nature to soothe. He whispered a word of the clergyman, Dr. Ashton.

"Father says he shall bring him to-night," was the answer. "It's all a farce."

"I am sorry to hear you say that," returned Lord Hartledon, gravely.

"If I had never said a worse thing than that, my lord, I shouldn't hurt.

Unless the accounts are made up beforehand, parsons can't avail much at the twelfth hour. Mother's lessons to me when a child, and her reading the Bible as she sits here in the night, are worth more than Dr. Ashton could do. But for those old lessons' having come home to me now, I might not have cared to ask your forgiveness. Dr. Ashton! what is he? For an awful sinner--and it's what I've been--there's only Christ. At times I think I've been too bad even for Him. I've only my sins to take to Him: never were worse in this world."

Lord Hartledon went out rather bewildered with the occurrences of the morning. Thinking it might be only kind to step into the clerk's, he crossed the stile and went in without ceremony by the open back-door.

Mrs. Gum was alone in the kitchen, crying bitterly. She dried her eyes in confusion, as she curtsied to her visitor.

"I know all," he interrupted, in low, considerate tones, to the poor suffering woman. "I have been to see him. Never mind explanations: let us think what we can best do to lighten his last hours."

Mrs. Gum burst into deeper tears. It was a relief, no doubt: but she wondered how much Lord Hartledon knew.

"I say that he ought to be got away from that place, Mrs. Gum. It's not fit for a man to die in. You might have him here. Calne! Surely my protection will sufficiently screen him against tattling Calne!"

She shook her head, saying it was of no use talking to w.i.l.l.y about removal; he wouldn't have it; and she thought herself it might be better not. Jabez, too; if this ever came out in Calne, it would just kill him; his lordship knew what he was, and how he had cared for appearances all his life. No; it would not be for many more hours now, and w.i.l.l.y must die in the shed where he had lived.

Lord Hartledon sat down on the ironing-board, the white table underneath the window, in the old familiar manner of former days; many and many a time had he perched himself there to talk to her when he was young Val Elster.

"Only fancy what my life has been, my lord," she said. "People have called me nervous and timid; but look at the cause I've had! I was just beginning to get over the grief for his death, when he came here; and to the last hour of my life I shan't get the night out of my mind! I and Jabez were together in this very kitchen. I had come in to wash up the tea-things, and Jabez followed me. It was a cold, dark evening, and the parlour fire had got low. By token, my lord, we were talking of you; you had just gone away to be an amba.s.sador, or something, and then we spoke of the wild, strange, black man who had crept into the shed; and Jabez, I remember, said he should acquaint Mr. Marris, if the fellow did not take himself off. I had seen him that very evening, at dusk, for the first time, when his great black face rose up against mine, nearly frightening me to death. Jabez was angry at such a man's being there, and said he should go up to Hartledon in the morning and see the steward.

Just then there came a tap at the kitchen door, and Jabez went to it.

It was the man; he had watched the servant out, and knew we were alone; and he came into the kitchen, and asked if we did not know him. Jabez did; he had seen w.i.l.l.y later than I had, and he recognized him; and the man took off his black hair and great black whiskers, and I saw it was w.i.l.l.y, and nearly fainted dead away."

There was a pause. Lord Hartledon did not speak, and she resumed, after a little indulgence in her grief.

"And since then all our aim has been to hide the truth, to screen him, and keep up the tale that we were afraid of the wild man. How it has been done I know not: but I do know that it has nearly killed me. What a night it was! When Jabez heard his story and forced him to answer all questions, I thought he would have given w.i.l.l.y up to the law there and then. My lord, we have just lived since with a sword over our heads!"

Lord Hartledon remembered the sword that had been over his own head, and sympathized with them from the depths of his heart.

"Tell me all," he said. "You are quite safe with me, Mrs. Gum."

"I don't know that there's much more to tell," she sighed. "We took the best precautions we could, in a quiet way, having the holes in the shutters filled up, and new locks put on the doors, lest people might look in or step in, while he sat here of a night, which he took to do.

Jabez didn't like it, but I'm afraid I encouraged it. It was so lonely for him, that shed, and so unhealthy! We sent away the regular servant, and engaged one by day, so as to have the house to ourselves at night. If a knock came to the door, w.i.l.l.y would slip out to the wood-house before we opened it, lest it might be anybody coming in. He did not come in every night--two or three times a-week; and it never was pleasant; for Jabez would hardly open his mouth, unless it was to reproach him. Heaven alone knows what I've had to bear!"

"But, Mrs. Gum, I cannot understand. Why could not w.i.l.l.y have declared himself openly to the world?"

It was evidently a most painful question. Her eyes fell; the crimson of shame flushed into her cheeks; and he felt sorry to have asked it.

"Spare me, my lord, for I _cannot_ tell you. Perhaps Jabez will: or Mr.

Hillary; he knows. It doesn't much matter, now death's so near; but I think it would kill me to have to tell it."

"And no one except the doctor has ever known that it was w.i.l.l.y?"

"One more, my lord: Mirrable. We told her at once. I have had to hear all sorts of cruel things said of him," continued Mrs. Gum. "That he thieved and poached, and did I know not what; and we could only encourage the fancy, for it put people off the truth as to how he really lived."

"Amidst other things, they said, I believe, that he was out with the poachers the night my brother George was shot!"

"And that night, my lord, he sat over this kitchen fire, and never stirred from it. He was ill: it was rheumatism, caught in Australia, that took such a hold upon him; and I had him here by the fire till near daylight in the morning, so as to keep him out of the damp shed. What with fearing one thing and another, I grew into a state of perpetual terror."

"Then you will not have him in here now," said Lord Hartledon, rising.

"I cannot," she said, her tears falling silently.

"Well, Mrs. Gum, I came in just to say a word of true sympathy. You have it heartily, and my services also, if necessary. Tell Jabez so."

He quitted the house by the front-door, as if he had been honouring the clerk's wife with a morning-call, should any curious person happen to be pa.s.sing, and went across through the snow to the surgeon's. Mr. Hillary, an old bachelor, was at his early dinner, and Lord Hartledon sat down and talked to him.

"It's only rump steak; but few cooks can beat mine, and it's very good.

Won't your lordship take a mouthful by way of luncheon?"

"My curiosity is too strong for luncheon just now," said Val. "I have come over to know the rights and wrongs of this story. What has w.i.l.l.y Gum been doing in the past years that it cannot be told?"

"I am not sure that it would be safe to say while he's living."

"Not safe! with me! Was it safe with you?"

"But I don't consider myself obliged to give up to justice any poor criminal who comes in my way," said the surgeon; and Val felt a little vexed, although he saw that he was joking.

"Come, Hillary!"

"Well, then, w.i.l.l.y Gum was coming home in the _Morning Star_; and a mutiny broke out--mutiny and murder, and everything else that's bad; and one George Gordon was the ringleader."

"Yes. Well?"

"w.i.l.l.y Gum was George Gordon."

"What!" exclaimed Hartledon, not knowing how to accept the words. "How could he be George Gordon?"

"Because the real George Gordon never sailed at all; and this fellow Gum went on board in his name, calling himself Gordon."

Lord Hartledon leaned back in his chair and listened to the explanation.

A very simple one, after all. Gum, one of the wildest and most careless characters possible when in Australia, gambled away, before sailing, the money he had acquired. Accident made him acquainted with George Gordon, also going home in the same ship and with money. Gordon was killed the night before sailing--(Mr. Carr had well described it as a drunken brawl)--killed accidentally. Gum was present; he saw his opportunity, went on board as Gordon, and claimed the luggage--some of it gold--already on board. How the mutiny broke out was less clear; but one of the other pa.s.sengers knew Gum, and threatened to expose him; and perhaps this led to it. Gum, at any rate, was the ringleader, and this pa.s.senger was one of the first killed. Gum--Gordon as he was called--contrived to escape in the open boat, and found his way to land; thence, disguised, to England and to Calne; and at Calne he had since lived, with the price offered for George Gordon on his head.