"There is hope for us, Helen," the brother said, "in your words. If I am right in interpreting them, there is hope I may find peace for my Mildred. I have a key to them which you know not of. But, alas! we must first re-establish ourselves."
"And of that, too, there is hope," said Helen. "Go to Mr. Riches: let him have the pleasure of telling you the news. It only came last night.
From your friend,--but our dear chaplain will tell you all the story."
So to Polydore, Randolph went, and learned the discovery which Rereworth had made. It certainly gave him great joy, although it was communicated very gravely. The chaplain did not affect to conceal his mortification at his old pupil"s dereliction of the right path. He urged the necessity of sacrificing every personal feeling in order to procure a reconciliation with Mildred"s family.
"It is not so very long," he said, "since you spoke to me of an inherited quarrel and injunctions of revenge. Such thoughts must be laid aside now. They were before uncharitable and wrong, but now they are actively pernicious. I shall have no comfort till I know that peace has been made."
Randolph subdued some rising impatience, and answered that he had conceived some hopes of so desirable a result.
"And, my dear sir," he continued, "we desire, Mildred and I, that you would hallow our union. As soon as possible we shall be re-married, and we hope for your blessing."
"Then the bride"s parents must be present to sanction it," Polydore answered. "With that condition, nothing could afford me so great a pleasure."
Randolph sighed, and departed on his return to town. But his heart was much lighter than when he went. He had also much to do, and the necessary activity diverted his melancholy. First, he must call upon Rereworth, and learn the details of this confession of Everope"s, which afforded hope of recovering his rights, and restoring his father"s honour. For this purpose he bent his way straight to the Temple.
Seymour met him with congratulatory rebukes, uttered between jest and earnest, and declared that he would never have presented Mr. Morton at Mr. Winston"s, had he been at all aware of his wicked ways. He also indulged in some facetiousness respecting the defendant"s running off with the plaintiff"s daughter, and remarked that a wife was scarcely a desirable commodity where there was no property at all either to give or receive. His tone showed his confidence in the approach of a happy denouement. Randolph forced a smile, and turned the conversation to the story of Everope.
"Ah," Seymour said, becoming grave in his turn, "that"s a bad business.
He was to have sworn to his tale this morning, and when I went to see after him, he was no more. He died by his own hand. In the night. I have reproached myself ever since I parted from him yesterday, for allowing him to be alone. And now his death puts us in a little difficulty. I must become a witness. But there. You can read the narrative, as I took it down from his lips. And then we will go and talk over the affair at Winter"s. I understand Everope"s accomplice is now down in the country."
Randolph read the confession with eager eyes. He saw that Everope"s remorse had perhaps originated in his recognition of himself at the trial, as having once offered to do him some trifling service. He wished he had arrived in time to repeat the offer, and possibly to save the spendthrift from destruction. When he had finished the perusal, he and Rereworth set forth on their way to Mr. Winter"s offices.
They had to pa.s.s the foot of Everope"s staircase. A group of persons, laundresses and porters, such as may often be seen gossiping in the inns of court, was congregated at the entrance, conversing earnestly, but in low tones. Rereworth made his companion acquainted with the few details he had been able to collect, or to conjecture, concerning the unhappy suicide.
He had gone to Everope"s rooms in good time, to prepare him to attest his confession, and had even then been detained by a crowd like that which was still there. He made his way without much heed, being in fact preoccupied, and rapped at the spendthrift"s door. The old laundress answered the knock, seemed greatly surprised when he inquired for her master, and raised the corner of her ap.r.o.n to her eyes.
"What is the matter, ma"am?" Rereworth asked. "What has happened?" And he remembered the groups below with some alarm.
A few broken words made him acquainted with the catastrophe.
Everope, it seemed, had come home late in the night. He had obtained a light, and had been engaged in looking over a quant.i.ty of correspondence and other papers, for such were found strewn about the floor of his room. Letters of old date, some written when he must have been quite a youth, lay open on the table. Were the recollections they aroused more than his shattered, perhaps delirious, senses could bear? Such Rereworth fancied must have been the case.
He had glanced slightly at some of the scattered papers, and then recoiled from prying into matters which concerned him not. One sc.r.a.p, however, freshly written upon, caught his eye, and he found it to contain a few stanzas of verse, evidently penned long ago, and some incoherent attempts to continue them, which must have been made that very night. He took possession of this doc.u.ment, in order to produce it, if necessary; and he now showed it to his friend. And Randolph, in reading the following melancholy lines, the older portion of the writing, thought with shuddering pity of the whisper, once addressed by Everope to himself, which had called forth his offer of a.s.sistance.
"Tis sad to think of hopes destroyed, Of prospects lost that once seemed fair, Of hours in waste or vice employed, Of talents as _that_ fig-tree bare.
Where ruin watches the closed door, And crouches on the cold hearth-stone, Where home"s a word of love no more, And friends or kindred there are none;
What though the door exclude the wind?
What though the roof may shield from rain?
No winds like those that tear the mind, No storms like those that rend the brain.
While stern remorse unfolds her scroll, And points to every d.a.m.ning word, Showing the late-repenting soul All it has thought, done, seen, or heard--
Ay, press thy hands upon thine eyes, Ay, hear not, feel not, if thou wilt!
Still memory to conscience cries, Still every heart-quake throbs of guilt.
Think over all thou might"st have been, Contrast it then with all thou art: A retrospect so dark and keen May well appal thy shuddering heart.
Woe for the days when childhood knelt At night and morn its prayer to say; Breathed worship such as childhood felt, And loved the vows it learned to pay!
But now--but now--can phrenzy pray?
To Heaven shall desperation cry?
Madness prepares destruction"s way-- Escape is none--despair, and die!
"That," said Rereworth, when Randolph gave him back the paper, "is the superficial penitence, which never does any good. It is regret for the effects of the fault, not for the fault itself. In true repentance there is always hope, but in such feelings as are here portrayed there is little else than despair. Hence this miserable end."
"Yet," Randolph urged, with some discontent at the moralizing of his friend, "he seems to have been meant for better things."
"Few men are not," answered Rereworth. "Few men are not meant for better things than they achieve. Short-coming is the rule, and fulfilling the exception. But a truce with what sounds misanthropical. Here we are at Winter"s."
The lawyer heard of the suicide with much commiseration.
"But," said he, "our feelings must not interfere with business. This confession, verified by you, Mr. Rereworth, ought to carry us to the bottom of the matter. I wish we could get at the true circ.u.mstances of the marriage. You see the real insinuation is, that the late Mr.
Trevethlan was privy to the death of Ashton, and the spiriting away of the witness. I wish, with all my heart, we could clear up the mystery."
And Randolph felt that there could be no rest for him until the entire groundlessness of so dark an impeachment was made clear to all the world.
CHAPTER XIII.
From house to house, from street to street, The rapid rumour flies; Incredulous ears it finds, and hands Are lifted in surprise; And tongues through all the astonished town Are busier now than eyes.
Southey.
"So, Mistress Miniver, the old house is like to wear a new sign before many days. There"ll be a change in the arms, methinks."
"Not while my name"s Miniver, Master Colan," answered the plump hostess of the Trevethlan Arms.
"Maybe you"d not object to change that, dame," suggested the farmer.
Mrs. Miniver played with a well-sized bunch of keys that hung from her girdle.
"Ay, ay," said Colan--
""The key of the locker the good-wife keeps, The good-wife"s busy, the good-man sleeps."
"I fancy you sat in St. Michael"s chair the day you were married, Mistress Miniver."
"I"ll tell you one who did, farmer," said the hostess, laughing merrily; "and that"s the lady of Pendar"l. G.o.d forbid I should ever say of Trevethlan! And d"ye mind what I said, Master Colan? Didn"t I foretell what would happen if ever Squire Randolph and Miss Mildred came together? And you see they"re wooed and married and all."
"There"s not much good like to come of it for Trevethlan," observed the farmer. "They say the mother"s as cold as stone."
"Mayhap some folks wouldn"t care if she were," said Germoe the tailor, who had come up during the last few words.