"About what?" inquired the poor woman sadly.
"About clearing the memory of your sister and the birth of her son from unmerited shame," replied Mr. Wynne gravely.
"Nothing," she answered sadly.
"Nothing?" repeated the minister, in surprise.
"Nothing," she reiterated.
"What! will you leave the stigma of undeserved reproach upon your sister in her grave and upon her child all his life, when a single revelation from you, supported by my testimony, will clear them both?" asked the minister, in almost indignant astonishment.
"Not willingly, the Lord above knows. Oh, I would die to clear Nora from blame!" cried Hannah, bursting into a flood of tears.
"Well, then, do it, my poor woman! do it! You can do it," said the clergyman, drawing his chair to her side and laying his hand kindly on her shoulder. "Hannah, my girl, you have a duty to the dead and to the living to perform. Do not be afraid to attempt it! Do not be afraid to offend that wealthy and powerful family! I will sustain you, for it is my duty as a Christian minister to do so, even though they--the Brudenells--should afterwards turn all their great influence in the parish against me. Yes, I will sustain you, Hannah! What do I say? I? A mightier arm than that of any mortal shall hold you up!"
"Oh, it is of no use! the case is quite past remedying," wept Hannah.
"But it is not, I a.s.sure you! When I first heard the astounding news of Brudenell"s first marriage with the Countess of Hurstmonceaux, and his wife"s sudden arrival at the Hall, and recollected at the same time his second marriage with Nora Worth, which I myself had solemnized, my thoughts flew to his poor young victim, and I pondered what could be done for her, and I searched the laws of the land bearing upon the subject of marriage. And I found that by these same laws--when a man in the lifetime of his wife marries another woman, the said woman being in ignorance of the existence of the said wife, shall be held guiltless by the law, and her child or children, if she have any by the said marriage, shall be the legitimate offspring of the mother, legally ent.i.tled to bear her name and inherit her estates. That fits precisely Nora"s case. Her son is legitimate. If she had in her own right an estate worth a billion, that child would be her heir-at-law. She had nothing but her good name! Her son has a right to inherit that--unspotted, Hannah! mind, unspotted! Your proper way will be to proceed against Herman Brudenell for bigamy, call me for a witness, establish the fact of Nora"s marriage, rescue her memory and her child"s birth from the slightest shadow of reproach, and let the consequences fall where they should fall, upon the head of the man! They will not be more serious than he deserves. If he can prove what he a.s.serts--that he himself was in equal ignorance with Nora of the existence of his first wife, he will be honorably acquitted in the court, though of course severely blamed by the community. Come, Hannah, shall we go to Baymouth to-morrow about this business?"
Hannah was sobbing as if her heart would break.
"How glad I would be to clear Nora and her child from shame, no one but the Searcher of Hearts can know! But I dare not! I am bound by a vow! a solemn vow made to the dying! Poor girl! with her last breath she besought me not to expose Mr. Brudenell, and not to breathe one word of his marriage with her to any living soul!" she cried.
"And you were mad enough to promise!"
"I would rather have bitten my tongue off than have used it in such a fatal way! But she was dying fast, and praying to me with her uplifted eyes and clasped hands and failing breath to spare Herman Brudenell. I had no power to refuse her--my heart was broken. So I bound my soul by a vow to be silent. And I must keep my sacred promise made to the dying; I must keep it though, till the Judgment Day that shall set all things right, Nora Worth, if thought of it all, must be considered a fallen girl and her son the child of sin!" cried Hannah, breaking into a pa.s.sion of tears and sobs.
"The devotion of woman pa.s.ses the comprehension of man," said the minister reflectively. "But in sacrificing herself thus, had she no thought of the effect upon the future of her child?"
"She said he was a boy; his mother would soon be forgotten; he would be my nephew, and I was respected," sobbed Hannah.
"In a word, she was a special pleader in the interest of the man whose reckless haste had destroyed her!"
"Yes; that was it! that was it! Oh, my Nora! oh, my young sister! it was hard to see you die! hard to see you covered up in the coffin! but it is harder still to know that people will speak ill of you in your grave, and I cannot convince them that they are wrong!" said Hannah, wringing her hands in a frenzy of despair.
For trouble like this the minister seemed to have no word of comfort. He waited in silence until she had grown a little calmer, and then he said:
"They say that the fellow has fled. At least he has not been seen at the Hall since the arrival of his wife. Have you seen anything of him?"
"He rushed in here like a madman the day she died, received her last prayer for his welfare, and threw himself out of the house again, Heaven only knows where!"
"Did he make no provision for this child?"
"I do not know; he said something about it, and he wrote something on a paper; but indeed I do not think he knew what he was about. He was as nearly stark mad as ever you saw a man; and, anyway, he went, off without leaving anything but that bit of paper; and it is but right for me to say, sir, that I would not have taken anything from him on behalf of the child. If the poor boy cannot have his father"s family name he shall not have anything else from him with my consent! Those are my principles, Mr. Wynne! I can work for Nora"s orphan boy just as I worked for my mother"s orphan girl, which was Nora, herself, sir."
"Perhaps you are right, Hannah. But where is that paper. I should much like to see it," said the minister.
"The paper he wrote and left, sir?"
"Yes; show it to me."
"Lord bless your soul, sir, it wasn"t of no account; it was the least little sc.r.a.p, with about three lines wrote on it; I didn"t take any care of it. Heavens knows that I had other things to think of than that. But I will try to find it if you wish to look at it," said Hannah, rising.
Her search of course was vain, and after turning up everything in the house to no purpose she came back to the parson, and said:
"I dare say it is swept away or burnt up; but, anyway, it isn"t worth troubling one"s self about it."
"I think differently, Hannah; and I would advise you to search, and make inquiry, and try your best to find it. And if you do so, just put it away in a very safe place until you can show it to me. And now good-by, my girl; trust in the Lord, and keep up your heart," said the minister, taking his hat and stick to depart.
When Mr. Wynne had gone Reuben Gray, who had been walking about behind the cottage, came in and said:
"Hannah, my dear, I have got something very particular to say to you; but I feel as this is no time to say it exactly, so I only want to ask you when I may come and have a talk with you, Hannah."
"Any time, Reuben; next Sunday, if you like."
"Very well, my dear; next Sunday it shall be! G.o.d bless you, Hannah; and G.o.d bless the poor boy, too. I mean to adopt that child, Hannah, and cowhide his father within an inch of his life, if ever I find him out!"
"Talk of all this on Sunday when you come, Reuben; not now, oh, not now!"
"Sartinly not now, my dear; I see the impropriety of it. Good-by, my dear. Now, shan"t I send Nancy or Peggy over to stay with you?"
"Upon no account, Reuben."
"Just as you say, then. Good-by, my poor dear."
And after another dozen affectionate adieus Reuben reluctantly dragged himself from the hut.
CHAPTER XV.
NORA"S SON.
Look on this babe; and let thy pride take heed, Thy pride of manhood, intellect or fame, That thou despise him not; for he indeed, And such as he in spirit and heart the same, Are G.o.d"s own children in that kingdom bright, Where purity is praise, and where before The Father"s throne, triumphant evermore, The ministering angels, sons of light, Stand unreproved because they offer there, Mixed with the Mediator"s hallowing prayer, The innocence of babes in Christ like this.
--_M.F. Tupper_.
Hannah was left alone with her sorrows and her mortifications.
Never until now had she so intensely realized her bereavement and her solitude. Nora was buried; and the few humble friends who had sympathized with her were gone; and so she was alone with her great troubles. She threw herself into a chair, and for the third or fourth time that day broke into a storm of grief. And the afternoon had faded nearly into night before she regained composure. Even then she sat like one palsied by despair, until a cry of distress aroused her. It was the wail of Nora"s infant. She arose and took the child and laid it on her lap to feed it. Even Hannah looked at it with a pity that was almost allied to contempt.
It was in fact the thinnest, palest, puniest little object that had ever come into this world prematurely, uncalled for, and unwelcome. It did not look at all likely to live. And as Hannah fed the ravenous little skeleton she could not help mentally calculating the number of its hours on earth, and wishing that she had thought to request Mr. Wynne, while he was in the house, to baptize the wretched baby, so little likely to live for another opportunity. Nor could Hannah desire that it should live. It had brought sorrow, death, and disgrace into the hut, and it had nothing but poverty, want, and shame for its portion in this world; and so the sooner it followed its mother the better, thought Hannah--short-sighted mortal.
Had Hannah been a discerner of spirits to recognize the soul in that miserable little baby-body!
Or had she been a seeress to foresee the future of that child of sorrow!