Under the Mendips Part 24

"There is a word I cannot catch, about the _Life_. Try to think of it. I can't."

Joyce glanced at her mother.

"What does he mean?" she said, helplessly. "Oh! what does he want?"

"The Life; I am the Life." The words came with difficulty now.

Then Piers, starting up, said:

"I know. I think I know. 'Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the _Life_.'"

A smile of infinite content came over the father's face.

"_Yes_," he said. "Yes, the Life."

Presently he murmured Melville's name, and those of the children who had gone before.

"The little girls all died but _one_," he said. "One is left--Sunshine."

They knelt down as in the presence of something unseen but near; for the shadows gathered on the fine face of the husband and father; and Piers repeated for the second time:

"Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the Life!"

As if with a great effort to repeat the words, the squire said, faintly, "Jesus said,"--then silence fell; and the next thing Joyce knew was that she was lying in her own little bed, and that she was fatherless.

The news of the squire's death spread quickly through the whole district. As is often the case, no one knew how much he had been respected till he was gone. Then there were terrible circ.u.mstances connected with his death, which, apart from his loss, troubled the magistrates who had sat with him on the bench, and had probably made enemies, as he had done, in the performance of their duty.

The roads across the Mendip were avoided more than ever, and as time went on and nothing was heard of or discovered about the man who had thrown the missile which had caused Mr. Falconer's death; if the wonder faded out, the fear remained; the county constabulary were, truth to tell, afraid of their own lives, and there was no machinery of detectives at work then, as now. However, whatever search was made it was fruitless, and the offender had escaped beyond the reach of punishment.

As with a sudden transition into a new state of existence, Joyce found herself the central figure to whom everyone looked for help and advice.

Her mother collapsed utterly. She would sit for hours in that inaction, which it is so painful to notice in those who have been once so full of life and movement. The boys who had been sent for from school did not return to it. Ralph surprised everyone by saying that he should give up study, and come and live at home and help his mother--at any rate, till Melville came back, if ever he did come back, to take his place at Fair Acres. By interest exerted by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Harry and Bunny both got into the navy, and went forth, poor little boys, full of hope and delight, to encounter the hardships which then were the universal fate of little middys, in their first acquaintance with the salt sea waves they loved so well.

It was touching to see the young brother and sister, who were left at the head of affairs, resolutely doing their utmost to spare their mother, and to keep things, as Mr. Watson called it, "square."

If he were old he was intensely useful and honourable; and Ralph's power to adapt himself to his new manner of life was really wonderful. He set himself to study the few and scanty agricultural books which were on his father's shelves, and mastered the accounts in a way which Mr. Gell, the lawyer, and Mr. Paget, the executor under the will, found to be surprising.

Miss Falconer had sent many kind little notes on very deep black-edged paper, and sealed with a large black seal, to "her dear afflicted sister;" and Charlotte, who had returned from Barley Wood on the day after Joyce left it, composed verses of doubtful rhythm, and still more doubtful sense, which she sent, done up in brown paper parcels by the carrier, as they were too voluminous to be conveyed in any other way.

Verses in which "bleeding hearts" and "rivers of tears," sought vainly for appropriate rhymes; where "fears" refused to follow "bears," and "eyes" was made to do duty again and again with "prize" and "sighs."

Mrs. More wrote a tender letter of sympathy to Joyce, and would have driven over to see her, had not the shortening days and threatened cold kept her a close prisoner. Indeed, she was laid low with one of her most dangerous illnesses before September was over; and Miss Frowde and her doctor thought it more than doubtful if, at her advanced age, she would recover.

It was on a still October afternoon, when autumnal stillness reigned in the woods and fields, that Joyce went to the seat under the fir trees to be alone with her sorrow. The gra.s.sy slope was slippery now with recent rain, and though the clouds had rolled off eastward, the sunshine was pale and watery, coming in fitful gleams through the veil of thin misty vapour which hung over the sky.

Joyce often came to this seat; it was a.s.sociated with her father, and she loved to be there and give full vent to the sorrow which, for the sake of others, she had learned to hide. Miss Falconer and Charlotte had paid one visit of condolence after the funeral. They were surprised, and I may even say disappointed, to see Joyce so calm, and Miss Falconer thought how different it would be with Charlotte when she was taken from her; she would be entirely prostrate and unfit for exertion.

It is well for the world that some people are fit for exertion, even in the midst of crushing sorrow. It would be a melancholy thing if all grief-stricken ones fed on their grief in solitude, and shut themselves up from doing their best, to lighten the burden of others.

Miss Falconer would not have had cause to lament Joyce's unnatural calm, if she had seen her as she sat upon the old bench, in the dim, pale light of the October day, when, amidst the hush of all around, her sobs and low cry of "Oh! father--father," throbbed in the quiet air.

They had been so much to each other; they had understood each other so perfectly. The beautiful tie between father and daughter, which when it exists is one of the most beautiful in the world, seemed severed, cruelly severed, and Joyce was desolate. She was scarcely eighteen, and the freshness and gladness of her life hitherto had been remarkable.

Now, all unawares, the storm had swept over her sky, and, when it pa.s.sed, left her lonely indeed.

Mrs. Falconer was one of those people who bury their dead out of sight, and cannot bear the mention of their names. Ralph, setting his face bravely to meet his duty, did not speak of his father as Joyce would have loved to speak of him, and it was only to Piers, that Joyce could sometimes ease her burdened heart, by talking of her father. Just as on the summer morning, now looking so far off, left in the golden haze of joy and glad young life, Joyce had seen her lame brother at the gate of the plantation, so she saw him now.

She made a great effort to control her weeping, and said:

"It is very slippery on the turf to-day; wait, dear, and I will come down to help you." But Piers said:

"I want _you_ to come down; I don't want to come up."

"Is anything the matter?"

Piers did not answer, and in another minute Joyce was at his side.

"Joyce, there is a woman hiding under the maples and brambles."

"A woman? Perhaps she is one of the women employed on the farm."

"I don't know," said Piers, "I wish you would come and see who it is."

"Very well, dear," Joyce said; "you are sure it is a _woman_?"

"Yes, and she is crying and sobbing."

Joyce followed Piers along the shrubbery path, now covered with a new layer of fallen leaves, and, at the turn of a still narrower side path, she saw, half hidden by the brambles and undergrowth, a woman; her head, bowed upon her hands, and her att.i.tude one of despair.

Joyce went near and said: "What is the matter? Are you in pain? Can I help you?"

The woman raised her head, and Joyce recognised at once that she was Susan Priday.

Thoughts of the night on Mendip; of the fierce onslaught made on Gilbert Arundel by the big giant, and the almost certainty she felt, that the cruel blow aimed at her father was by the same hand, made Joyce start back and say, coldly:

"You had better not stay here, these are private grounds."

Piers, who was leaning against the bole of a beech tree, said:

"Yes; get up and go away. I will show you the gate into the road."

"Lady," said the girl, pa.s.sionately, "I came to see _you_. I saw you sobbing and crying on the bench yonder, for I got into the plantation that way. I heard you sob, and call 'Father,' and then my heart nearly broke, and I came round at the back and got over the hedge. I felt as if I dare not speak to you. Do you know me, lady?"

"Yes," Joyce said; "of course I see who you are, but I--I cannot do anything for you, and we are all in great grief, very, very great grief," Joyce said, with a sudden spasm of agony in her voice.

"I know it, I know it, that's why I came; and I'm in grief, too. Father is gone away, no one knows where; the boys have run off, and, oh! the baby is dead. I did think I'd keep him, for mother's sake; but, in a drunken fit, father threw a pot of boiling water at me. It missed me, and the baby caught it on his neck and face, and it scalded him dreadful. The school mistress was kind, and so was Mrs. Amos, she that owns the farm; but he died--he died--and I am all alone. Oh! Miss, oh!

dear young lady, pity me."

"I do pity you," Joyce said. "But where is your father? For you must be aware that suspicion points to him as the cause of my--of my dear father's death."

"Yes, I do know it. Oh! miss, forgive me, and let me come and serve you. I want no wage; but I'd die for you, if that would do you good. I have never forgot your face that night, nor how you spoke soft then instead of angry. Oh, miss, let me come and live with you. I will sleep on the ground. I'll do the work of two in the dairy, or in the house, and I want no wage. Poor mother always said G.o.d would take care of me, but He has taken away the baby, He has, that is the cruellest part. And father; oh! miss, you can't tell what it is to be filled with shame about a father."