Trevlyn Hold Part 55

"What did you say, sir?"

"Was there no one else, Mr. Chattaway, to serve your turn, but you must send down your wronged and unhappy nephew?" reiterated Mr. Daw, in tones that penetrated to every ear. "I have heard it said, since I came into this neighbourhood, that Mr. Chattaway would be glad, if by some lucky chance Squire Trevlyn's grandson and legal heir could be put out of his path. It seems he has succeeded in accomplishing it."

Mr. Chattaway's face grew dark and frowning. "Take care what you say, sir, or you shall answer for your words. I ask you what you mean."

"And I ask you--Was there no one you could despatch this morning into that dangerous mine, then on the very eve of exploding, but that helpless boy, Rupert, who might not resist your authority, and so went to his death? Was there no one, I ask?"

Mr. Daw's zeal was decidedly outrunning his discretion. It is the province of exaggeration to destroy its cause, and the unfounded charge--which, temperately put, might have inflicted its sting--fell comparatively harmless on the ear of Mr. Chattaway. He could only stare and wonder--as if a proposition had been put to him in some foreign language.

"Why--bless my heart!--are you mad?" he presently exclaimed. His tone was sufficiently equable. "Could _I_ tell the mine was going to explode?

Had but the faintest warning reached me, do you suppose I should not have emptied the pit of all human souls? I am as sorry for Rupert as you can be: but the blame is not mine. It is not any one's--unless it be his own. There was plenty of time to leave the pit after he had delivered the message I sent him down with, had he chosen to do so. But I suppose he stopped gossiping with the men. This land belongs to me, sir. Unless you have any business here, I must request you to leave it."

There was so much truth in what Mr. Chattaway urged that the stranger began to be a little ashamed of his heat. "Nevertheless, it is a thorn removed from your path," he cried aloud. "And you would have removed him from it yourself long ago, could you have done it without sin."

A half murmur of a.s.sent arose from the crowd. The stranger had hit the exact facts. Could the master of Trevlyn Hold have removed Rupert Trevlyn from his path without "sin," without danger or trouble, it had been done long ago. In short, were it as easy to put some obnoxious individual out of life, as it is to stow away an offending piece of furniture, Mr. Chattaway had most a.s.suredly not waited until now to rid himself of Rupert: and those listeners knew it.

Mr. Chattaway turned his frowning face on the murmurers; but before more could be said by any one, the circle was penetrated by some new-comers, one of them in distress of mind that could not be hidden or controlled.

Mrs. Chattaway having recovered from her apparent fainting-fit--though in reality she had not lost consciousness, and her closed eyes and intense pallor had led to the mistake--the pony-carriage had been urged with all speed to the scene of action. In vain the clerk Ford reiterated Mr. Chattaway's protest against their approach. Miss Diana Trevlyn was not one to attend against her will to the protests of Mr. Chattaway.

"I would have saved his life with my own; I would have gone down in his place had it been possible," wailed poor Mrs. Chattaway, wringing her hands, and wholly forgetting the reticence usually imparted by the presence of her husband.

_Her_ grief was genuine; and the crowd sympathised with her almost as it did with those despairing women, weeping in their new widowhood. But the neighbours had not now to learn that Madame Chattaway loved her dead brother's children, if her husband did not.

"For Heaven's sake don't make a scene here!" growled Mr. Chattaway, in impotent anger. "Have you no sense of the fitness of things?"

But his wife, however meekly submissive at other times, was not in a state for submission then. Unable to define the sensations that oppressed her, she only felt that all was over; the unhappy boy had gone from them for ever; the cruel wrongs inflicted on him throughout life were now irreparable.

"He has gone with all our unkindness on his head," she wailed, partially unconscious, no doubt, of what she said; "gone to meet his father, my poor lost brother, bearing to him the tale of his wrongs! Oh, if----"

"Be silent, will you?" shrieked Chattaway. "Are you going mad?"

Mrs. Chattaway covered her face with her hands, and leaned against the barrow on which her husband was sitting. Miss Diana Trevlyn, who had been gathering various particulars from the crowd, who had said a word of comfort--though it was little comfort they could listen to yet--to the miserable women, came up at this moment to Chattaway.

"It was a very unhappy thing that you should have sent Rupert into the pit this morning," she said, her face wearing its most haughty expression.

"Yes," he answered. "But I could not foresee what was about to happen.

It--it might have been Cris. Had Cris been in the way at the time, and not Rupert, I should have despatched him."

"Chattaway, I would give all my fortune to have him back again. I----"

A strange commotion on the outskirts of the crowd attracted their attention, and Miss Diana brought her sentence to an abrupt conclusion, and turned sharply towards it, for the shouts bore the sound of triumph; and a few voices were half breaking into hurrahs. Strange sounds, in that awful death-scene!

Who was this advancing towards them? The crowd had parted to give him place, and he came leaping to the centre, all haste and excitement--a fair, gentlemanly young man, his silken hair uncovered, his cheeks hectic with excitement. Mrs. Chattaway cried aloud with a joyful cry, and her husband's eyes and mouth slowly opened as though he saw a spectre.

It was Rupert Trevlyn. Rupert, it appeared, had not been down the pit at all. Sufficiently obedient to Mr. Chattaway, but not obedient to the letter, Rupert, when he reached the pit's mouth, had seen the last of those men descending whom Chattaway had imperiously ordered down, and sent the message to Bean by him. His chief inducement was that he had just met an acquaintance who had come to tell him of a pony for sale--for Rupert, commissioned by Miss Trevlyn, had been making inquiries for one. It required little pressing to induce Rupert to abandon the office and Blackstone for some hours, and start off to see this pony. And that was where he had been. Mrs. Chattaway clasped her arms around his neck, in utter defiance of her husband's prejudices, unremembered then, and sobbed forth her emotion.

"Why, Aunt Edith, you never thought I was one of them, did you? Bless you! I am never down the pit. I should not be likely to fall into such a calamity as that. Poor fellows! I must go and ascertain who was there."

The crowd, finding Rupert safe, broke into a cheer, and a voice shouted--could it have been Mr. Daw's?--"Long live the heir! long live young Squire Trevlyn!" and the words were taken up and echoed in the air.

And Mr. Chattaway? If you want me to describe his emotions to you, I cannot do it. They were of a mixed nature. We must not go so far as to say he _regretted_ to see Rupert back in life; felt no satisfaction at his escape; but with his reappearance all the old fears returned. They returned tenfold from the very fact of his short immunity from them, and the audacious words of the crowd turned his face livid. In conjunction with the yet more audacious words previously spoken by the stranger and the demonstrative behaviour of his wife, they were as a sudden blow to Mr. Chattaway.

Those shouters saw his falling countenance, his changed look, and drew their own conclusions. "Ah! he'd put away the young heir if he could,"

they whispered one to another. "But he haven't got shut of him this time."

No; Mr. Chattaway certainly had not.

"G.o.d has been merciful to your nephew," interposed the peaceful voice of Mr. Lloyd, drawing near. "He has been pleased to save him, though He has seen fit to take others. We know not why it should be--some struck down, others spared. His ways are not as our ways."

They lay there, a long line of them, and the minister pointed with his finger as he spoke. Most of the faces looked calm and peaceful. Oh! were they ready? Had they lived to make G.o.d their friend? Trusting in Christ their Saviour? My friends, this sudden call comes to others as well as to miners: it behoves us all to be ready for it.

As the day drew on, the excitement did not lessen; and Mr. Chattaway almost forgot the hurt, which he would have made a great deal of at another time. But the ankle was considerably swollen and inflamed, giving him pain still, and it caused him to quit the scene for home earlier than he might otherwise have done.

He left Cris to superintend. Cris was not incompetent for the task; but he might have displayed a little more sympathy with the sufferers without compromising his dignity. Cris had arrived in much bustle and excitement at the scene of action: putting eager questions about Rupert, as to how he came to be down the shaft, and whether he was really dead.

The report that he was dead had reached Cris Chattaway's ears at some miles' distance, as it had reached those of many others.

It reached Maude Trevlyn's. The servants at the Hold heard it, and foolishly went to her. "There had been an explosion in the pit, and Master Rupert was amongst the killed." Maude was as one stricken with horror. She did not faint or cry; putting on a shawl and bonnet mechanically, as she would for any ordinary walk, she left the house on her way to Blackstone. "Don't go, Maude; it will only be more painful to you," Octave had said in kindly tones, as she saw her departing; but Maude, as though she heard not, bore swiftly on with a dry eye and burning brow. Turning from the fields into the road, she met George Ryle.

"Where are you going, Maude?"

"Oh, George, don't stop me! I had no one but him."

But George did stop her. He saw her countenance of despair, and suspected what was wrong. Putting his arm gently round her, he held her to him. Maude supposed he had heard the tidings, and was unwilling that she should approach the terrible scene.

"My darling, be comforted. You have been hearing that Rupert shared the calamity, but the report was a false one. Rupert is alive and well. It is the happy truth, Maude."

Overcome by emotion, Maude leaned upon him and sobbed out more blissful tears than perhaps she had ever shed. Mr. George would have had no objection to apply himself to the task of soothing her until the shades of night fell; but scarcely a minute had they so stood when an interruption, in the shape of some advancing vehicle, was heard. These envious interruptions will occur at the most unwelcome moments, as perhaps your own experience may bear witness to.

It proved to be the pony-carriage of Miss Diana Trevlyn. Mr. Chattaway with his lame foot sat beside her, and Mrs. Chattaway occupied the groom's place behind. Miss Diana, who chose to drive her own pony, although she had a gentleman at hand, drew up in surprise at the sight of Maude.

"I had heard that Rupert was killed," she explained, advancing to the carriage, her face still wet with tears. "But George Ryle has told me the truth."

"And so you were starting for Blackstone!" returned Miss Diana. "Would it have done any good, child? But that is just like you, Maude. You will act upon impulse to the end of life."

Mrs. Chattaway bent forward with her sweet smile. "Rupert is on his way home, Maude, alive and well. I am sorry you should have heard what you did."

"It seems to me the whole parish has heard it," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr.

Chattaway.

Room was made for Maude beside Mrs. Chattaway, and the pony-carriage went on. It had gone only a few paces when the Reverend Mr. Daw came in sight. Was the man gifted with ubiquity! But an hour or two, as it seemed, and he had been bearding Mr. Chattaway at the mine. He lifted his hat as he pa.s.sed, and Miss Diana and Maude bowed in return. He did not approach the carriage, or attempt to stop it; but went on with long strides, as one in a hurry.

Mr. Chattaway, who had never looked towards the man, never moved a muscle of his face, turned his head to steal a glance when he deemed him at a safe distance. There stood Mr. Daw, talking to George Ryle, one hand stretched out in the heat of argument, the other grasping the red umbrella, which was turned over his shoulder.

"Treason, treason!" mentally e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the master of Trevlyn Hold, as he raised his handkerchief to his heated face. "How I might have laughed at them now, if--if--if that had turned out to be true about Rupert!"

CHAPTER x.x.xIII