"Then, as he planted one foot gingerly on the timber and stayed himself, I leaped along the bridge and met him, and without a word looked at him.
The moon was topping the crest of the hills and threw my shadow upon him, the last that ever fell upon his body to its knowledge.
""Fellow, out of the way!" he cried, with a most commanding voice and air, though only too well he knew me; and my wrath against him began to rise.
""You pa.s.s not here, and you never make another live step on this earth," I said, as calmly as now I speak, "unless you obey my orders."
"He saw his peril, but he had courage--perhaps his only virtue. "Fool!
whoever you are," he shouted, that his voice might fetch him help; "none of these moon-struck ways with me! If you want to rob me, try it!"
""You know too well who I am," I answered, as he made to push me back.
"Lord Castlewood, here you have the choice--to lick the dust, or be dust! Here you forswore yourself; here you pay for perjury. On this plank you knelt to poor Winifred Hoyle, whom you ruined and cast by; and now on this plank you shall kneel to her son and swear to obey him--or else you die!"
"In spite of all his pride, he trembled as if I had been Death himself, instead of his own dear eldest son.
""What do you want!" As he asked, he laid one hand on the rickety rail and shook it, and the dark old tree behind him shook. "How much will satisfy you?"
""Miser, none of your money for us! it is too late for your half crowns! We must have a little of what you have grudged--having none to spare--your honor. My demands are simple, and only two. My mother is fool enough to yearn for one more sight of your false face; you will come with me and see her."
""And if I yield to that, what next?"
""The next thing is a trifle to a n.o.bleman like you. Here I have, in this blue trinket (false gems and false gold, of course), your solemn signature to a lie. At the foot of that you will have the truth to write, "I am a perjured liar!" and proudly sign it "Castlewood," in the presence of two witnesses. This can not hurt your feelings much, and it need not be expensive."
"Fury flashed in his bright old eyes, but he strove to check its outbreak. The gleaning of life, after threescore years, was better, in such lordly fields, than the whole of the harvest we got. He knew that I had him all to myself, to indulge my filial affection.
""You have been misled; you have never heard the truth; you have only heard your mother"s story. Allow me to go back and to sit in a dry place; I am tired, and no longer young; you are bound to hear my tale as well. I pa.s.sed a dry stump just now; I will go back: there is no fear of interruption." My lord was talking against time.
""From this bridge you do not budge until you have gone on your knees and sworn what I shall dictate to you; this time it shall be no perjury.
Here I hold your cursed pledge--"
"He struck at me, or at the locket--no matter which--but it flew away.
My right arm was crippled by his heavy stick; but I am left-handed, as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d should be. From my left hand he took his death, and I threw the pistol after him: such love had he earned from his love-child!"
Thomas Castlewood, or Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind, I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, "The man is mad, poor fellow; and no wonder!"
The sun was setting, not upon the vast Pacific from desert heights, but over the quiet hills and through the soft valleys of tame England; and, different as the whole scene was, a certain other sad and fearful sunset lay before me: the fall of night upon my dying father and his helpless child, the hour of anguish and despair! Here at last was the cause of all laid horribly before me; and the pity deeply moving me pa.s.sed into cold abhorrence. But the man was lost in his own visions.
"So in your savage wrath," I said, "you killed your own father, and in your fright left mine to bear the brunt of it."
He raised his dark eyes heavily, and his thoughts were far astray from mine. He did not know what I had said, though he knew that I had spoken.
The labor of calling to mind and telling his treatment of his father had worked upon him so much that he could not freely shift attention.
"I came for something, something that can be only had from you," he said, "and only since your cousin"s death, and something most important.
But will you believe me? it is wholly gone, gone from mind and memory!"
"I am not surprised at that," I answered, looking at his large wan face, and while I did so, losing half my horror in strange sadness. "Whatever it is, I will do it for you; only let me know by post."
"I see what you mean--not to come any more. You are right about that, for certain. But your father was good to me, and I loved him, though I had no right to love any one. My letter will show that I wronged him never. The weight of the world is off my mind since I have told you every thing; you can send me to the gallows, if you think fit, but leave it till my mother dies. Good-by, poor child. I have spoiled your life, but only by chance consequence, not in murder-birth--as I was born."
Before I could answer or call him back, if I even wished to do so, he was far away, with his long, quiet stride; and, like his life, his shadow fell, chilling, sombre, cast away.
CHAPTER LIII
BRUNTSEA DEFIANT
Thus at last--by no direct exertion of my own, but by turn after turn of things to which I blindly gave my little help--the mystery of my life was solved. Many things yet remained to be fetched up to focus and seen round; but the point of points was settled.
Of all concerned, my father alone stood blameless and heroic. What tears of shame and pride I shed, for ever having doubted him!--not doubting his innocence of the crime itself, but his motives for taking it upon him. I had been mean enough to dream that my dear father outraged justice to conceal his own base birth!
That ever such thought should have entered my mind may not make me charitable to the wicked thoughts of the world at large, but, at any rate, it ought to do so. And the man in question, my own father, who had starved himself to save me! Better had I been the most illegal child ever issued into this cold world, than dare to think so of my father, and then find him the model of every thing.
To hide the perjury, avarice, and cowardice of his father, and to appease the bitter wrong, he had even bowed to take the dark suspicion on himself, until his wronged and half-sane brother (to whom, moreover, he owed his life) should have time to fly from England. No doubt he blamed himself as much as he condemned the wretched criminal, because he had left his father so long unwarned and so unguarded, and had thoughtlessly used light words about him, which fell not lightly on a stern, distempered mind. Hence, perhaps, the exclamation which had told against him so.
And then when he broke jail--which also told against him terribly--to revisit his shattered home, it is likely enough that he meant after that to declare the truth, and stand his trial as a man should do. But his wife, perhaps, in her poor weak state, could not endure the thought of it, knowing how often jury is injury, and seeing all the weight against him. She naturally pledged him to pursue his flight, "for her sake,"
until she should be better able to endure his trial, and until he should have more than his own pure word and character to show. And probably if he had then been tried, with so many things against him, and no production of that poor brother, his tale would have seemed but a flimsy invention, and "Guilty" would have been the verdict. And they could not know that, in such case, the guilty man would have come forward, as we shall see that he meant to do.
When my father heard of his dear wife"s death, and believed, no doubt, that I was buried with the rest, the gloom of a broken and fated man, like polar night, settled down on him. What matter to him about public opinion or any thing else in the world just now? The sins of his father were on his head; let them rest there, rather than be trumpeted by him.
He had nothing to care for; let him wander about. And so he did for several years, until I became a treasure to him--for parental is not intrinsic value--and then, for my sake, as now appeared, he betook us both to a large kind land.
Revolving these things sadly, and a great many more which need not be told, I thought it my duty to go as soon as possible to Bruntsea, and tell my good and faithful friends what I was loath to write about.
There, moreover, I could obtain what I wanted to confirm me--the opinion of an upright, law-abiding, honorable man about the course I proposed to take. And there I might hear something more as to a thing which had troubled me much in the deepest of my own troubles--the melancholy plight of dear Uncle Sam. Wild, and absurd as it may appear to people of no grat.i.tude, my heart was set upon faring forth in search of the n.o.ble Sawyer, if only it could be reconciled with my duty here in England.
That such a proceeding would avail but little, seemed now, alas! too manifest; but a plea of that kind generally means that we have no mind to do a thing.
Be that as it will, I made what my dear Yankees--to use the Major"s impertinent phrase--call "straight tracks" for that ancient and obsolete town, rejuvenized now by its Signor. The cause of my good friend"s silence--not to use that affected word "reticence"--was quite unknown to me, and disturbed my spirit with futile guesses.
Resolute, therefore, to pierce the bottom of every surviving mystery, I made claim upon "Mr. Stixon, junior"--as "Stixon"s boy" had now vindicated his right to be called, up to supper-time--and he with high chivalry responded. Not yet was he wedded to Miss Polly Hopkins, the daughter of the pickled-pork man; otherwise would he or could he have made telegraphic blush at the word "Bruntsea?" And would he have been quite so eager to come?
Such things are trifling, compared to our own, which naturally fill the universe. I was bound to be a great lady now, and patronize and regulate and drill all the doings of nature. So I durst not even ask, though desiring much to do so, how young Mr. Stixon was getting on with his delightful Polly. And his father, as soon as he found me turned into the mistress, and "his lady" (as he would have me called thenceforth, whether or no on my part), not another word would he tell me of the household sentiments, politics, or romances. It would have been thought a thing beneath me to put any nice little questions now, and I was obliged to take up the tone which others used toward me. But all the while I longed for freedom, Uncle Sam, Suan Isco, and even Martin of the Mill.
Law business, however, and other hinderances, kept me from starting at once for Bruntsea, impatient as I was to do so. Indeed, it was not until the morning of the last Sat.u.r.day in November that I was able to get away. The weather had turned to much rain, I remember, with two or three tempestuous nights, and the woods were almost bare of leaves, and the Thames looked brown and violent.
In the fly from Newport to Bruntsea I heard great rollers thundering heavily upon the steep bar of shingle, and such a lake of water shone in the old bed of the river that I quite believed at first that the Major had carried out his grand idea, and brought the river back again. But the flyman shook his head, and looked very serious, and told me that he feared bad times were coming. What I saw was the work of the Lord in heaven, and no man could prevail against it. He had always said, though no concern of his--for he belonged to Newport--that even a British officer could not fly in the face of the Almighty. He himself had a brother on the works, regular employed, and drawing good money, and proud enough about it; and the times he had told him across a pint of ale--howsomever, our place was to hope for the best; but the top of the springs was not come yet, and a pilot out of Newport told him the water was making uncommon strong; but he did hope the wind had nigh blowed itself out; if not, they would have to look blessed sharp tomorrow. He had heard say that in time of Queen Elizabeth sixscore of houses was washed clean away, and the river itself knocked right into the sea; and a thing as had been once might just come to pa.s.s again, though folk was all so clever now they thought they wor above it. But, for all that, their grandfathers" goggles might fit them. But here we was in Bruntsea town, and, bless his old eyes--yes! If I pleased to look along his whip, I might see ancient pilot come, he did believe, to warn of them!
Following his guidance, I descried a stout old man, in a sailor"s dress, weather-proof hat, and long boots, standing on a low seawall, and holding vehement converse with some Bruntsea boatmen and fishermen who were sprawling on the stones as usual.
"Driver, you know him. Take the lower road," I said, "and ask what his opinion is."
"No need to ask him," the flyman answered; "old Banks would never be here, miss, if he was of two opinions. He hath come to fetch his daughter out of harm, I doubt, the wife of that there Bishop Jim, they call him--the chap with two nails to his thumb, you know. Would you like to hear how they all take it, miss?"
With these words he turned to the right, and drove into Major Hockin"s "Sea Parade." There we stopped to hear what was going on, and it proved to be well worth our attention. The old pilot perhaps had exhausted reason, and now was beginning to give way to wrath. The afternoon was deepening fast, with heavy gray clouds lowering, showing no definite edge, but streaked with hazy lines, and spotted by some little murky blurs or blots, like tar pots, carried slowly.
"Hath Noah"s Ark ever told a lie?" the ancient pilot shouted, pointing with one hand at these, and with a clinched fist at the sea, whence came puffs of sullen air, and turned his gray locks backward. "Mackerel sky when the sun got up, mermaiden"s eggs at noon, and now afore sunset Noah"s Arks! Any of them breweth a gale of wind, and the three of them bodes a tempest. And the top of the springs of the year to-morrow.
Are ye daft, or all gone upon the spree, my men? Your fathers would "a knowed what the new moon meant. Is this all that cometh out of larning to read?"
"Have a pinch of "bacco, old man," said one, "to help you off with that stiff reel. What consarn can he be of yourn?"