The Catholic World Volume Iii Part 48

Lady Greystock drove on briskly. They were out of the shadow of the trees and again on the broad, white gleaming gravelled road that led to the west lodge, and the turnpike road to Blagden. Not a word was spoken. On went the ponies, who knew the dark shadows of the elms that stood at intervals, in groups, two or three together, by the side of the road, and threw their giant outlines across it, making the moon-light seem brighter and brighter as it silvered the surface of the broad carriage drive, and made the crushed granite sparkle--on went the ponies, shaking their heads with mettlesome impatience when the pulling of the reins offended them, not frightened at the whirling of the great droning night insects, which flew out from the oak-trees on the left, nor shying away from the shadows--on they went through the sweet, still, soft, scented night air, and the broad, peaceful light of the silent moon--on they went! Not one word mingled with the sound of their ringing hoofs, not a breath was heard to answer to the sighing of the leaves; the "good night" that had been spoken between the stranger and themselves still seemed to live in the hearing of those to whom he had spoken, and to keep them in a meditative and painful silence.

At last the lodge was reached. The servant opened the gates; the carriage was driven through; the high road was gained, and all romantic mystery was over; the dream that had held those silent ones was gone; and like one suddenly awoke, Lady Greystock said: "Eleanor!

how wonderful; you knew that man! Eleanor! he knew you; asked about you; had been seeking you. Why was he there in the Beremouth woods--appearing at this hour, among the ferns and gra.s.s, like a wild creature risen from its lair? Eleanor! why don't you speak to me? Why, when he spoke of you by your name, did you not answer for yourself?

Why did you send him to Jenifer? Oh! Eleanor; I feel there is something terrible and strange in all this. I cannot keep it to myself. I must tell my father. It can't be right. It cannot be for any good that we met a man lurking about, and not owned by you, though he is here to find you. Speak, Eleanor! Now that I am in the great high road I feel as if I had gone through a terror, or escaped some strange danger, or met a mystery face to face."

Lady Greystock spoke fast and in a low voice, and Eleanor, bending a little toward her, heard every word.

"You _have_ met a mystery face to face," she said in a whisper, which, however, was sufficiently audible. "I _did_ know that man. And I am {319} not denying that he sought me, and that he had a right to seek me. But many things have changed since those old days, when, if I had obeyed him, I should have done better than I did. I know what he wants; and Jenifer can give it to him. Here we are at Blagden; think no more of it, Lady Greystock."

No answer was given to Eleanor's words; they met Dr. Blagden on the steps at the door. "You are later than usual--all right?" "All quite right," said Eleanor. "The beauty of the night tempted us to come home through Beremouth," said Lady Greystock. "How lovely it would look on such a sweet, peaceful night," said Mrs. Blagden, who now joined them; and then Eleanor took the carriage wraps in her arms up stairs, and Lady Greystock went into the drawing-room, and soon after the whole household--all but Eleanor--were in bed.

Not Eleanor. She opened a box where she kept her letters, and many small objects of value to her, and carefully shutting out the moonlight, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g her lamp into brilliancy, she took out letter after letter from Henry Evelyn calling her his beloved one, and his wife; then the letter from Corny Nugent, saying that Henry Evelyn and Horace Erskine were one; and the one thing that Corny Nugent had sent to her as evidence--it seemed to be proof sufficient. It was a part of a letter from Horace to his uncle, Mr. Erskine, which had been flung into a waste-paper basket, and which, having the writer's signature, Corny had kept, and sent to Eleanor. Not, as he said, that he knew the man's handwriting, but that she did; and that, therefore, to her it would have value as proving or disproving his own convictions.

Eleanor had never brought this evidence to the proof. She had laid by Corny's letter, and the inclosure. She had put it all aside with the weight of a great dread on her mind, and "Not yet, not yet," was all she said as she locked away both the a.s.sertion and the proof.

But her husband was at Beremouth now. Yes; and on what errand? She knew that too.

Mrs. Brewer had called that morning to see Lady Greystock. Mrs. Brewer had come herself to tell Claudia that Mary would arrive, and that Horace would bring her. She would not trust any one but herself to give that information. She never let go the idea of Horace having behaved in some wrong way to Claudia. She knew Claudia's disposition, her bravery, her determination; and her guesses were very near the truth. "Mother Mary" had those womanly instincts which jump at conclusions; and the truths guessed at through the feelings are truths, and remain truths for ever, though reason has never proved them or investigation explained them.

Then, too, there was her sister's letter, which Mrs. Brewer had sent to Father Daniels. There the pa.s.sing fancy for Claudia had been spoken of. In that letter the love of money had peeped out, and supplied the motive; but Mrs. Brewer knew very well that Claudia's disposition was not of a sort to have any acquaintance with pa.s.sing fancies. If she had loved Horace, she had loved with her whole heart; and if she had been deceived in him, her whole heart had suffered, and her whole life been overcast. "Mother Mary" had felt to some purpose; and now, only herself should say to Lady Greystock that he was coming among them again.

She had arrived at Blagden and she had told Claudia everything; what Horace wished as to Mary, and what her sister and Mr. Erskine desired; and she had not hidden her own unwillingness to lose her child, or her own wish that Mary might have married, when she did marry, some one more to her mother's mind, and nearer to her mother's {320} house. And it was in remembrance of this conversation that Lady Greystock, when she took Jenifer into the carriage, had said: "If you ever pray for my father, and all he loves, pray _now_?"

Something of all this had been told by Lady Greystock to Eleanor. And in the time that the aunt and niece had been together that day, Eleanor had said to Jenifer, "He is down at the park wanting to marry Miss Lorimer."

Jenifer's darling--Jenifer's darling's darling; how she loved "Mother Mary," and Lansdowne Lorimer's child, only her own great and good heart knew. What could she do but go to G.o.d, and his priest? What human foresight could have prevented this? What human wisdom could set things right? And after all, they did not _surely_ know that Eleanor's husband and Claudia's lover were met in one man, and that man winning the heart of lovely, innocent Mary Lorimer, and pressing marriage on her. But for her prayer, Jenifer used to say, she should have gone out of her mind. Oh, the comfort that grew out of the thought that G.o.d KNEW! and that her life and all that was in it were given to him. Such a shifting of responsibility--such a supporting sense of his never allowing anything to be in that life that was not, in some way, for his glory--such practical strength, such heart-sustaining power, grew out of Jenifer's prayer that even Eleanor's numbed heart rested on it, and she had learnt to be content to live, from hour to hour, a life of submission and waiting.

But was the waiting to be over now?--was something coming? If so, she must be prepared. And so, diligently, by the lamp-light, Eleanor produced her own letters, and opened that torn sheet to compare the writing. It was different in some things, yet the same. As she gazed, and examined, and compared terminations, and matched the capital letters together, she knew it was the same handwriting. Time had done its work. The writing of the present was firmer, harder, done with a worse pen, written at greater speed. But that was all the change. She was convinced; and she put away her sorrow-laden store, locked them safe from sight, said her night prayers, and went to bed. Not a sigh, nor a tear. No vain regrets, no heart-easing groans. The time for such consolations had long been pa.s.sed with Eleanor. Within the last nine years her life had as much changed as if she had died and risen again into another world of intermediate trial. A very great change had been wrought in her by Lady Greystock's friendship. Eleanor had become educated. The clever, poetical girl, who had won Horace Erskine's attention by her natural superiority to everything around her--even when those surroundings had been of a comparatively high state of cultivation, had hardened into the industrious and laborious woman.

When it pleased Lady Greystock to hear her sing, in her own sweet, untaught way, the songs of her own country, she had sung them; and then, when Lady Greystock had offered to cultivate the talent, she had worked hard at improvement. She had been brought up by French nuns, at a convent school, and had spoken their language from childhood; when Lady Greystock got French books, it was Eleanor's delight to read aloud; and she had made Mrs. Blagden's two little girls almost as familiar with French as she was herself. Those things had given rise to the idea that Mrs. Evelyn, as she was always called, had seen better days; and no one had ever suspected her relationship to Jenifer. Mr. Brewer alone knew of it. As to Mr. Brewer ever telling anything that could be considered, in the telling, as a breach of confidence, that was, of course, impossible.

That night--that night so important in our story, Jenifer, having done all her duties by her mistress, which were really not a few, and having seen that the girl who did the dirty {321} work was safe in the darkness of a safely put out candle, opened her lattice to look on the night. Her little room had a back view. That is, it looked over the flagged kitchen court, and the walled-in flower garden, and beyond toward the village of Blagden and the majestic woods at the back of the house at Beremouth.

Jenifer had gone to bed, and had risen again, oppressed by a feeling that something was, as she expressed it, "going on--something doing somewhere--'something up,' as folks say, sir. I can't account for it.

I fancied I heard something--that I was wanted. And I thought at first that some one was in my room. Then I went into mistress's room, without my shoes, not to wake her. She was all right, sleeping like a tender babe. Then I went to Peggy's room. The girl was asleep. I sniffed up and down the pa.s.sage, just to find if anything wrong in the way of smoke or fire was about. No; all was pure and pleasant; and then I went down stairs to make sure of the doors being locked.

Everything was right, sir"--such was Jenifer's account to Mr. Brewer; who, when she paused at this point, asked: "What next did you do? Did you go upstairs again to bed?" "I went upstairs," the woman answered, "but not to bed. I sat at the window, and looked out over the garden, and over the meadows beyond the old bridge, and on to Beremouth. And the night was the brightest, fairest, loveliest night I ever beheld.

And so, sir, I said my prayers once more, and went again to bed; and slept in bits and s.n.a.t.c.hes, for still I was always thinking that somebody wanted me, till the clock struck six; and then I got up."

"You don't usually get up at six, or before the girl gets up, do you?"

"No, sir; never, I may say. But I got up to ease my mind of its burthens. And when Peggy had got up, and was down stairs, I started off for the alms-house; I thought Mr. Dawson might be up to say ma.s.s there, for it was St. Lawrence's Day." "Well?" "But there had been no message about ma.s.s, and no priest was expected. And as I got back to our door there was Mrs. Fell, the milk-woman. She had brought the milk herself. I asked how that should be. She said they had had a cow like to die in the night, and that their man had been up all night, and that she was sparing him, for he had gone to lie down. Then I said, 'Why, I could never have heard any of you busy about the cattle in the night'--you see they rent the meadows. But she said they were not in the meadows; the beasts were all in the shed at the farm. 'But,' she said, it's odd if you were disturbed, for a man came to our place just before twelve o'clock, and asked for you.' 'For me!' I cried--'a man at your place in the middle of the night, asking for me!' She said, 'Yes; and a decent-spoken body, too. But tired, and wet through and through. He said he had fallen into the Beremouth deer pond, up in the park. That is, he described the place clear enough, and we knew it was the deer pond, for it could not be anywhere else!'" "And did you ask where the man went to?" "No, sir. I lifted my eyes, and I saw him."

"And who was he?" "Oh, Mr. Brewer, it must all be suffered as he gives it to me to suffer; but I am not clear about telling his name."

Mr. Brewer took out his watch and looked at it. "It is nearly ten o'clock," he said. "Where's your mistress?"

"Settled to her work, sir."

Mr. Brewer held this long talk with Jenifer in that right-hand parlor down stairs where he had paid that money to Mrs. Morier, when the reader first made his acquaintance. He had great confidence in Jenifer. He knew her goodness, and her patience, and her trust. He knew something, too, of her trials, and also of her prayer; but he had come there to investigate a very serious matter, and he was going steadily through with it.

"Listen, Jenifer."

"Yes, sir."

{322}

"Last night, just after our night prayers, Father Daniels being in the house, my friend, Mr. Erskine, who escorted my step-daughter, Mary Lorimer, home, went out into the park, just, as was supposed, to have a cigar before going to bed. Mrs. Brewer and I were in Mary's room when we heard Mr. Erskine leave the house. He certainly lighted his cigar. Mary's window was open, and we smelt the tobacco. Jenifer, he never returned."

They were both standing and looking at each other. "My life, and all that is in it!" Up went Jenifer's prayer, but voicelessly, to heaven.

"My life, and all that is in it!" But a strong faith that the one terrible evil that her imagination pictured would not be in it, was strong within her.

"He never returned. My man-servant woke me in my first sleep by knocking at the bed-room door, and saying that Mr. Erskine had not returned. I rose up and dressed myself. I collected the men and went out into the park. We went to the south lodge, to ask if any one had seen him. 'No,' they said. 'But the west lodge-keeper had been there as late as near to ten o'clock, and he had said that a man had been in their house asking a good many questions about Beremouth, and who we had staying there, and if a Mr. Erskine was there, or ever had been there, and inquiring what sort of looking man he was, whether he wore a beard, or had any peculiarity? how he dressed, and if there had ever been any report of his going to be married? They had answered his questions, because they suspected nothing worse than a gossiping curiosity; and they had given him a rest, and a cup of tea. He said that a friend, a cousin of his, had lived as servant with Mr. Erskine; and he also asked if Mr. Erskine would be likely to pa.s.s through that lodge the next day, for that he had a great curiosity to see him. He said that he had known him well once, and wanted greatly to see him once more. He, after all this talking, asked the nearest way to Marston. He was directed through the park, and he left them. Our inquiries about Horace Erskine having been answered by this history told by one lodge-keeper to the other, we could not help suspecting that some one had been on the watch for the young man, and taking Jones from the lodge, and his elder boy with us, we dispersed ourselves over the park to seek for him, a good deal troubled by what we had heard. We got to the deer pond, but we had sought many places before we got there; it did not seem a likely place for a man to go to in the summer night. We looked about--we went back to get lanterns--they were necessary in the darkness made by the thick foliage; one side was bright enough, and the pool was like a looking-gla.s.s where it was open to the sloping turf, and the short fern, which the deer trample down when they get there to drink; but the side where the thorns, hollies, and yew-trees grow was as black as night; and yet we thought we could see where the wild climbing plants had been pulled away, and where some sort of struggle might have taken place. As we searched, when we came back, we found strong evidence of a desperate encounter; the branches of the great thorn-tree were hanging split from the stem, and, holding the lantern, we saw the marks of broken ground by the margin of the pond, as if some one had been struggling at the very edge of it. Then, all at once, and I shall never understand why we did not see it before--the moonbeams grew brighter, I suppose--but there in the pond was the figure of a man; not altogether in the water, but having struggled so far out as to get his head against the bank, hid as it was with the gra.s.s and low brush-wood, the ferns and large-leaved water-weeds; we laid bold of the poor {323} fellow--it was Horace Erskine, Jenifer!"

"_My life, and all that is in it_." But the hope, the faith, rather, was still alive, that that worst grief should not be in it--so she prayed--so she felt--for Jenifer! "Master," she gasped, "not dead--not dead--Mr. Brewer."

"Not dead!" he said gravely; "he would have been dead if we had not found him when we did. He was bruised and wounded; such a sight of ill-treatment as no eyes ever before beheld, I think. He must have been more brutally used than I could have believed possible, if I had not seen it. His clothes were torn; his face so disfigured that he will scarcely ever recover the likeness of a man, and one arm is broken." "But not dead?" "No; but he _may_ die; the doctor is in the house, and the police are out after the man whom we suspect of this horrible barbarity. Now, Jenifer, hearing some talk of a stranger who seemed to know yon, I came here to ask you to tell me, in your own honest way, your honest story."

But Jenifer seemed to have no desire to make confidences.

"Who told you of a stranger?"

"Have you not told me yourself, in answer to my first questions, before giving you my reasons for inquiring?"

"No, sir; that won't do. I judge from what you said that you had heard something of this stranger before you came here."

"I had, Jenifer." And Mr. Brewer looked steadily at her.

"Well, sir?"

"Jenifer, I have really come out of tenderness to you, and to those who may belong to you."

"No one doubts your tenderness, sir; least of any could I doubt it.

Tell me who mentioned a stranger to you, so as to send you here to me?"

"Lady Greystock's groom, coming to Beremouth early, and finding us in great trouble, made a declaration as to a stranger who had appeared and stopped his mistress as she was driving through the park last night. He says this man asked if they could tell where Mrs. Evelyn lived, and Mrs. Evelyn, immediately answering, said that she lived somewhere in the neighborhood, and that he could learn by inquiring for you. The groom says that the man evidently knew Mrs. Morier's name, as well as year name; and that after speaking to him, Mrs.

Evelyn asked Lady Greystock to drive on, and that she drove rapidly, and never spoke till they had almost got back to Blagden."

"It is quite true," said Jenifer. "He told me the same story this day."

"Can you say where this man is? He will be found first or last; and it is for the sake of justice that you should speak, Jenifer. The police are on his track. Let me entreat you to give me every information.

Concealment is the worst thing that can be practised in such a case as this--have you any idea where he is? I do not ask you who he is; you will have to tell all, I fear, before a more powerful person than I am. I only come as a friend, that you may not be induced to conceal the evil-doer."

"The evil-doer," said Jenifer; "who says he did it?"

"I say he will be tried for doing it; and that a trial is good for the innocent in such a case of terrible suspicion as this."

"May be," said Jenifer, "may be!"

Then, once more, that prayer, said, from her very heart, though unspoken by her lips; and then these quiet words--"And as to the man himself. He is my brother. My mother's child by her second husband."

"Your brother--he with whom Eleanor lived in Ireland?" "Yes, Mr.

Brewer; he of whom I told you when you saved Eleanor so {324} many years ago. And as to where he is--step into the kitchen, sir, and you may see him sleeping in a chair by the fire--any way, I left him there, when I came to open the door to you."

Mr. Brewer had really come to Jenifer in a perfectly friendly way; exactly as he had said--out of tenderness. He had known enough to send him there, and to have those within call who would secure this stranger, whoever he was, and wherever he was found. Now, known, he walked straight into the kitchen, and there stopped to take a full view of a man in a leathern easy chair, his arm resting on Jenifer's tea-table, and sound asleep. A finer man eyes never saw. Strong in figure, and in face of a remarkable beauty. He was sunburnt; having pulled his neckcloth off, the skin of his neck showed in fair contrast, and the chest heaved and fell as the strong breath of the sleeper was drawn regularly and with healthy ease. It was a picture of calm rest; it seemed like a pity to disturb it. There stood Mr. Brewer safely contemplating one who was evidently in a state of blissful unconsciousness as to danger to others or himself.