Norston's Rest Part 61

Father--father! Oh, hear this! Stay with us! Oh, stay in your old home long enough for that! He is not in fault. He never said a word or gave me a look that was not n.o.ble. He never meant to harm me, or--or offend you. I--I alone am the guilty one."

"Ruth, Ruth! you are breaking my heart!" whispered Hurst.

"Breaking your heart! Oh, I have done enough of that, miserable wretch that I am!" answered the girl, speaking more and more faintly. "If I could only make him understand how sorry I am; but oh, Walton! I think he is growing cold. I have tried to warm him here in my arms, but his cheek lies chilly against mine, and my--my heart is cold as--as his."

The head drooped on her bosom; her arms slackened their hold, and fell away from the form they had embraced, and she settled down by her father, lifeless, for the time, as he was--for William Jessup was dead. A great shock had cast him down with his face in the dust.

Blasted, as it were, by a sudden conviction of his daughter's shame, he had gone into eternity as if struck by a flash of lightning.

CHAPTER LIV.

THE GARDENER'S FUNERAL.

A funeral moved slowly from the gardener's house. Out through the porch, under the cl.u.s.tering vines he had planted, William Jessup was carried by his own neighbors, with more than usual solemnity. His death had been fearfully sudden, and preceding circ.u.mstances surrounded it with weird interest. That which had been considered a mysterious a.s.sault, which no one cared to investigate too closely, now took the proportions of a murder, and many a sun-browned brow was heavy with doubt and dread as his friends stood ready to carry the good man out of the home his conduct had honored, and his hands had beautified.

Many persons out of his own sphere of life were gathered in the little cottage, seeking to console the poor girl, who was left alone in it, and to show fitting respect to the dead. Among these were Sir Noel and his household. Lady Rose came, subdued and saddened with womanly pity.

Mrs. Mason, full of grief and motherly anxiety, took charge within doors, pausing in her endeavors every few moments to comfort Ruth, whose sorrow carried her to the very brink of despair.

Many people came from the village, where Jessup had been very popular, and among them old Storms, who, with his son, kept aloof, looking darkly on the crowd that pa.s.sed into the dwelling.

No one seemed to remark that the young heir of "Norston's Rest" was absent; for it was known that he had taxed his strength too far, and was now paying the penalty of over exertion by a relapse which threatened to prostrate him altogether.

In the throng of villagers that came in groups through the park was the landlady of the public house, and with her Judith Hart, who was too insignificant a person for criticism, or the eager excitement of her manner might have arrested attention. But safe in her low estate, the girl moved about in the crowd, until the house was filled, and half the little concourse of friends stood reverently on the outside waiting for the coffin to be brought forth. Then she drew close to young Storms, who stood apart from his father, and whispered, "You beckoned me--what for?"

Storms answered her in a cautious whisper. Nodding her head, the girl replied:

"But after that, will you come to the public, or shall I--"

"To the Lake House, after the funeral," was the impatient rejoinder.

"I will be there, never fear."

With these words Judith glided off through the crowd, and pa.s.sing around the house, concealed herself in the thickets of blooming plants in which the garden terminated.

From this concealment she watched the funeral train file out from the porch and wind its way down the great chestnut avenue on its course to the churchyard. She saw Ruth, the last of that little household, following the coffin with bowed head, and footsteps that faltered in her short walk between the porch and the gate. Wicked as the girl was, a throb of compa.s.sion stirred her heart for the young creature whom she had so hated in her jealous wrath, but could pity in such deep affliction.

Slowly and solemnly the funeral procession swept from the house, and pa.s.sed, like a black cloud, down the avenue. The park became silent.

The cottage was still as death, for every living thing had pa.s.sed from it when the body of its master was carried forth. Then holding her breath, and treading softly, as if her sacrilegious foot were coming too near an altar, Judith Hart stole into the house. The door was latched, not locked. She felt sure of that, for, in deep grief, who takes heed of such things? A single touch of her finger, and she would be mistress of that little home for an hour at least. Still her heart quaked and her step faltered. It seemed as if she were on the threshold of a great crime, but had no power to retreat.

She was in the porch; her hand was stretched out, feeling for the latch, when something dragged at her arm. A sharp cry broke from her; then, turning to face her enemy, she found only the branch of a climbing rose that had broken loose from the kindred vines, whose thorns clung to her sleeve.

"What a fool I am!" thought the girl, tearing the th.o.r.n.y branch away from her arm. "What would he think of me? There!"

The door was open. She glided in, and shut it in haste, drawing a bolt inside.

"Bah! how musty the air is! With the shutters closed, the room seems like a grave. So much the better! No one can look through."

The little sitting-room was neatly arranged. Nothing but the chairs was out of place. Judith could see that, through all the gloom.

"Not here," she thought. "Nothing that he wants can be here. Her room first: that is the place to search."

CHAPTER LV.

SEARCHING A HOUSE.

Up the crooked staircase the girl turned and shut herself into a little chamber, opposite that in which Jessup had suffered his days of pain--a dainty chamber, in which the windows and bed were draped like a summer cloud, and on a toilet, white as virgin snow, a small mirror was clouded in like ice. Even the coa.r.s.e nature of Judith Hart was struck by the pure stillness of the place she had come to desecrate, and she stood just within the threshold, as if terrified by her own audacity. "If he were here, I wonder if he would dare touch a thing?"

she thought, going back to her purpose. "I wish he had done it himself; I don't like it."

She did not like it; being a woman, how could she? But the power of that bad man was strong upon her, and directly the humane thrill left her bosom. She was his slave again.

"Something may be here," she said, sweeping aside the delicate muslin of the toilet with her rude hands. "Ladies keep their choice finery and love-letters in such places, I know; and she puts on more airs than any lady of the land. Ah, nothing but slippers and boots that a child might wear, fit for Lady Rose herself, with their high heels and finikin st.i.tching. Such things for a gardener's daughter! Dear me, what is the use of a toilet if one cannot load it with pincushions, and things to hold ear-rings, and brooches, and such like! Nothing but boots--such boots, too--under the curtains, and on the top a prayer-book, bound in velvet. Well, this is something."

A small chair stood by the toilet, in which Judith seated herself, while she turned over the leaves of the book, and, pausing at the first page, read, "Ruth Jessup, from her G.o.dmother."

"Oh, that's old Mason. Not much that he wants here. No wonder the la.s.s is so puffed up. Velvet books, and a room like this! Well, well, I never had a G.o.dmother, and sleep in a garret, under the roof. That's the difference. But we shall see. Only let me find something that pleases him here, and this room is nothing to the one he will give me.

Thin muslin. Poh! I will have nothing less than silks and satins, like a born lady. That much I'm bent on."

Flinging down the prayer-book, without further examination, Judith proceeded to search the apartment thoroughly. She examined all the dainty muslins and bits of lace, the ribbons and humbler trifles contained in the old-fashioned bureau. She even thrust her hand under the snowy pillows of the bed, but found nothing save the pretty, lady-like trifles that awoke some of the old, bitter envy as she handled them.

"Now for the old man's room. Something is safe to turn up there," she thought, conquering a superst.i.tious feeling that had kept her from this room till the last. "It's an awful thing to ask of one. I wonder how he would feel prowling through a dead man's chamber like a thief, which I shall be if I find papers, and taking them amounts to that; but he would give me no peace till I promised to come."

The room from which Jessup had been carried out was in chilling order.

A fine linen sheet lay on the bed, turned back in a large wave as it had been removed from the body when it was placed in the coffin. A hot-house plant stood on the window-sill, perishing for want of water. The stand upon which Ruth's desk was placed had been set away in a corner, and to this Judith went at once. She found nothing, however, save a few sc.r.a.ps of paper, containing some date, or a verse of poetry that seemed copied from memory; two or three sheets of notepaper had a word or two written on them, as if an impulse to write had seized upon the owner, but was given up with the first words, which were invariably, "My dear--" The next word seemed hard to guess at, for it never found its way to paper; so Judith discovered nothing in her pillage of Ruth's desk, and the failure made her angry.

"He'll never believe I looked thoroughly, though what I am to find, goodness only knows. Every written paper that I lay my hands on must be brought to him. That is what he said, and what I am to do. But written papers ain't to be expected in a house like this, I should say. How am I to get what isn't here, that's the question? Anyway, I'll make a good search. Not much chance here, but there's no harm in looking."

Judith flung the closet-door open, and peered in, still muttering to herself, "Nothing but clothes. Jessup's fustian-coat. Poor old fellow!

He'll never wear it again. His Sunday-suit, too, just as he left it hanging. No shelf, no--Stay, here is something on the floor. Who knows what may be under it?"

Judith stooped down, and drew a long garment of gray flannel from the closet, where it seemed to have been cast down in haste. It was Jessup's dressing-gown, which had been taken from him after death.

"Nothing but the poor old fellow's clothes," she thought, growing pale and chilly, from some remembrance that possessed her at the sight of those empty garments. "I will throw the old dressing-gown back, and give it up. The sight of them makes me sick. Well, I've searched and searched. What more can he want of me?"

Judith Hart gathered up the dressing-gown in her hands, and was about to replace it, when a folded paper dropped to her feet. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper, thrust the dressing-gown back to the closet, and turned to a window, unfolding her prize as she went.

"His writing. The same great hooked letters, the same hard work in writing! 'To Walton Hurst.' It might be the same, only there is more of it, and the lines ain't quite so scraggly." Even as she talked, Judith held Jessup's letter to an opening in the shutter, and read it eagerly.

More than once Judith read the letter that Jessup had written with his last dying strength, at first with surprise deepening into terror as she went on. Then she fell into solemn thoughtfulness. Being a creature of vivid imagination, she could not stand in that death-chamber with a writing purloined from the murdered man's garments in her hand without a shiver of dread running through all her frame.

In truth, she was fearfully disturbed, and the very blood turned cold as it left her face when she thrust the paper into her bosom, shrinking from it with shudderings all the time.

After this, she remained some minutes by the window, lost in thoughts that revealed themselves plainer than language as they pa.s.sed over her mobile features.