JOSHUA’S CONFESSION.
Another bright June morning; newly-blown roses looking in at the
open windows, born, like the butterflies, for a day. Naomi was astir
earlier than usual after a sleepless night, full of care for her
father. O, if that sweet air of heaven, which is a joy in itself for
the happy, could but blow away one’s sense of abiding trouble, could
but bring the promise of relief! This was what Naomi thought, as she
stood at her open window, looking out at the calm hill-tops, from
which the summer mists were rising, like a veil slowly unfolded by
invisible hands.
She was at her father’s door before six o’clock, knocking and waiting
his reply with fast-throbbing heart, fearing she knew not what. There
was no answer. She felt the floor reeling under her feet. Awful fears
seized upon her. She knocked loudly, violently almost, and still no
answer. She tried the door with shaking hands, expecting to find it
locked, as it had been yesterday evening when she came to inquire
about the light; but it yielded under her hand, and she went into her
father’s room.
It was empty. She looked round with wild eager eyes, almost beside
herself in the agony of that great dread. The room was quite empty.
The bed had been lain upon; the candle had been left burning, and
had burned down to the brazen socket. There was a letter lying on
the escritoire, which Naomi seized upon eagerly. It was addressed to
herself.
She tore it open, still full of fear; for the letter might reveal
some terrible determination. There was another letter inside, sealed,
and addressed to Captain Pentreath.
‘My beloved Daughter,--I am going to Penmoyle to seek my wife,
and shall return to Combhaven no more. My duty there is done. I
have taught my people to know the right path. I can give them up
into the hands of a new minister. I am going where the darkness
has never been dispelled by Gospel light: I am going to find new
duties in desolate places. But first I must see my wife. I would
pardon and bless her before I go. Do not follow me. My lot is
fixed.
‘Do not fail to give the enclosed letter, with the seal unbroken,
into Captain Pentreath’s hands.--Your affectionate father,
‘JOSHUA HAGGARD.’
Naomi lifted up her heart in thankfulness. He had gone to do no
wicked and desperate act. He had gone to seek his wife, carrying with
him pardon and love. The ice had melted. Who could tell what healing
for mind and soul there might be in the change?
But this letter to be delivered to Arnold Pentreath? Here was a
fearful thought. What if it were a confession of her father’s
guilt--a confession which would put his life in Arnold’s power? And
Arnold had already shown himself merciless. To withhold the letter
would be to disobey her father’s express command. To deliver it might
be to endanger his life. What was she to do?
She sat by the escritoire with the letter in her hand, perplexed
in the extreme. Then, finding thought useless to show her the way,
she fell upon her knees and prayed for guidance, prayed long and
earnestly.
She rose from this prayer resolved, whether for good or ill, she
would obey her father’s behest, and deliver the letter, trusting
to God’s mercy and her own influence with Arnold for the issue. He
had pretended to love her--nay, had loved her--before this fearful
discovery of his brother’s fate. She must have some power over him
still; her pleading must be of some avail. Yes, she would obey her
father, and in so doing proclaim her trust in Providence.
‘“Let me fall now into the hand of the Lord; for very great are His
mercies,”’ said Naomi. ‘Can I doubt that my father is in God’s hands
to-day, though men may seem to have the ordering of his fate?’
She lost no time in carrying out her determination, but went back to
her room and put on her bonnet, and then ran down-stairs.
She was going out at the street-door when it suddenly occurred to her
that her father’s absence must speedily be discovered, and would
make a commotion in the house if it were in no manner accounted for.
So she went to the kitchen, where her aunt was employed in her usual
morning duty of giving out provisions for the day’s consumption from
a rigorously locked store-room.
To her Naomi quietly announced that her father had started early that
morning on his way to Penmoyle to see his wife.
‘Started early!’ cried Judith incredulously. ‘Why, the Truro coach
doesn’t go before half-past seven, and it’s not a quarter-past yet.
What do you mean by started early?’
‘He may have set out to walk part of the journey, perhaps, aunt,’
answered Naomi. ‘You know how fond he is of walking. He was gone at
six o’clock when I went to his room, and had left me a letter to say
he was going to Penmoyle.’
‘I think he might have written to me,’ said Judith, with her offended
air. ‘If he must needs go off at a moment’s notice, throwing all the
housekeeping into a muddle--you needn’t roast the mutton to-day,
Sally; the cold beef will be good enough for us--he might at least
have had the civility to address his explanation to me. After keeping
his house nearly thirty years it’s hard to have such a slight put on
me.’
‘The beef, mum!’ remonstrated Sally; ‘there’s hardly anything but
bones.’
‘Nonsense, girl; there’s plenty of picking between the bones. And if
I’ve time I’ll make a treacle pudding.’
Naomi vanished while the dinner was under discussion. Her heart was
very heavy as she went to the Grange. She had not entered the house
since the days when she had been Oswald’s plighted wife, and the
future lay fair before her, full of the promise of happiness. And now
there was a thought of horror in the very road by which she went.
Twice had her murdered lover been carried along that road; and now he
was lying quietly in his grave, and all earthly hopes lay buried with
him.
The old house looked peaceful enough in the cheerful morning light.
Gardens and shrubberies had been better kept since Arnold’s return.
The beds and borders were full of sweet-smelling flowers. The
windows were all open, and a handsome red setter--a favourite of
Arnold’s--was lying in the porch.
Naomi rang the noisy old bell, which was answered after a longish
pause by Nicholas the butler, who came across the hall, carrying his
master’s breakfast on one of those old silver trays which had been
kept under lock and key during the Squire’s lifetime, but which the
less careful sailor had given out for daily use.
At sight of Naomi the old man stopped short, with a startled look.
‘Lord, miss, how you skeared me!’ he exclaimed.
‘Can I see your master, Nicholas?’
‘To be sure ’ee can, miss. He’s to his break’ust in the blue
parlour--the room that was Squire’s study, you know; but the
harkiteck had it all routed out and painted.’
The butler opened the door of that small room on the left hand of the
porch, and ushered Naomi into the presence of Captain Pentreath.
He started up with a cry, half surprise, half welcome, as if to see
her only were in itself so glad a thing, that he forgot all the
painful circumstances of their meeting. This oblivion lasted but for
a moment. His face clouded, and he looked at her deprecatingly.
‘Naomi, I have been longing for such a meeting as this. I want to
tell you--to make you understand, if I can--that in what I have done
I have been constrained by my duty to the dead. Had your father
wronged me--that wrong the deepest one man could do another--I would
have endured all for your sake; but my duty to the dead is sacred. At
the hazard of breaking your heart, with the certainty of losing your
regard, I was forced to do what I did.’
‘Hush!’ she said; ‘do not speak of me or my feelings. You have
brought great misery upon us--an irreparable shame. It may be in your
power to work still greater misery for us. I can but do _my_ duty to
God and my father. My first duty to both is obedience. I have brought
you a letter.’
‘A letter?’
‘From my father. But before I give it you, promise that you will make
no evil use of it, that you will not make his own words the means of
destroying him. I cannot tell what he has written. I know that all
yesterday his mind was sorely disturbed--that he has been oppressed
and troubled in mind for a long time. How can I tell what he has
written? Promise me that you will not use this letter against him.’
‘I promise,’ answered Arnold, with a touch of scorn. ‘It is not
likely that a letter which your father writes to me of his own free
will can prove a weapon with which to strike him.’
He opened the letter, prepared to find an artful and studied
composition setting forth the minister’s innocence of the crime
charged against him, a plausible and subtle defence, such as the
ingenuity of a clever and thoughtful man might elaborate at his
leisure. The paper almost dropped from his hand as he read the first
line.
‘Arnold Pentreath, you accused me rightly. It was this hand slew
your brother. But the deed was not so basely done as you think.
We stood face to face, each with his weapon in his hand. It was
what the sons of Belial call an honourable meeting, though my
conscience tells me it was murder. He stole my young wife’s
heart--came between me and the most perfect happiness that Heaven
ever vouchsafed to man. I met him with my wife’s kiss still warm
upon his lip. I had seen them part, mind you, as lovers whose
hearts are cloven asunder in parting. I told him that he owed me
his life, and he was willing to admit the debt. “My life is of so
little value that you are heartily welcome to it,” he said; “I
have often thought of taking it myself.” He had a pair of pistols
about him, and proposed that we should fight on the spot; but
withdrew his proposal the next moment, remembering that I had no
practice in the use of firearms.
‘I told him I was willing to set my want of skill against his bad
cause. “It is you that are the wrongdoer,” I cried; “Heaven will
be on my side.”
‘We fought, and he fell. I was alone with his dead body, and all
the horror of my position was suddenly revealed to me. According
to my own creed I was a murderer; and in the sight of the world
I should stand revealed as a murderer if I were found with this
dead man by my side.
‘Satan, who had made me blind to the guilt of my act till it was
accomplished, now tempted me to the baseness of concealment. I
dragged the body to the edge of the shaft and threw it down, and
went quickly home, and kept silence about your brother’s fate
till the day I spoke of him with you.
‘I told you that in my opinion your brother had committed
suicide. I say still that he flung his life recklessly away. Had
he pleaded or argued with me my blind passion might have been
subjugated. He put the weapon which killed him into my hand.
‘God rest his soul, and pardon my sin!
‘I am going forth to a life as desolate as that of St. John in
the desert. May God so appoint my punishment here that I may not
lose my portion in glory hereafter!
‘JOSHUA HAGGARD.’
Naomi stood before Captain Pentreath with ashen lips, watching him as
he read the letter, praying dumbly all the while, and with that sense
of efficacy in her prayers, even in this moment of suspense, as only
an implicit faith can experience.
‘Thank God!’ exclaimed Arnold, giving her the letter; ‘thank God it
is not so bad as I believed! This confession has the stamp of truth;
and--he is your father!’
No words can tell the depth of tenderness in that little speech and
the look that went with it.
Both look and tone were lost on Naomi. Her eyes were rooted to the
letter; triumph, gratitude, joy, illumined her face.
‘It was not murder,’ she cried; ‘there was no treachery, no secrecy;
they stood face to face--sinners both--blinded, maddened by passion.
It was no murder. Father, how could I have wronged you by such base
thoughts--I, who have known and loved you all these years? Guilty!
yes, I will acknowledge your guilt; but not a treacherous assassin.
My God, I thank Thee!’
In days when the first gentlemen of the land asserted their sense
of honour and superiority to the common herd by slaying one another
in a formal manner the idea of a duel was not so revolting as it is
now. Even to Naomi, educated as she had been in a far different creed
from the code of honour, the knowledge that her father had stood
face to face with his foe, risking his own life against the life he
took, was an infinite relief. In horrible nightmare dreams she had
seen him, with the assassin’s face, creeping stealthily towards his
victim. The horrid image had haunted her sleeping and waking; and now
that horror was laid at rest for ever. Her belief in this confession
of her father’s was as implicit as her faith in God.
‘Arnold,’ she pleaded, with deep humility, as one who asks an almost
impossible boon, ‘can you ever bring yourself to forgive my erring
father?’
‘No!’ he answered stoutly; ‘but I no longer look upon him with
loathing. There is one atonement left to him--he can stand face to
face with me, as he stood with my brother, and let God judge between
us.’
Naomi flung herself at his feet, clasping his hands, as if he held
the keys of life and death.
‘No, no, no!’ she cried; ‘you would not be so cruel, so wicked--you,
who condemn the shedder of blood!’
‘I want the life of the man who slew my brother. So much the better
if I can have it in an honourable manner. Yes, Naomi, we will meet
as men of honour should, and let the righteous cause win.’
‘Arnold,’ she cried, ‘I thought you loved me.’
The pathos of that cry moved him. He bent over her as she knelt at
his feet, resisting his effort to raise her, clinging to his knees
in her agony, pleading as only women can plead for the love of their
dearest.
‘If I thought you loved me, and would give me love for love,’ he
said, with a sudden change to passionate tenderness, ‘I would spare
his life; yes, let him go unpunished to the grave; yes, forget that I
ever had an only and beloved brother. It is a mean offer, a miserable
bargain, proving me selfish, dastardly; but I am human, and I love
you. My love, my only love, answer me.’
‘Can you forgive me for being my father’s daughter?’
‘When I believed the worst of him I loved you, and held you unsullied
by his guilt.’
‘You must forgive him, Arnold. You would forgive him if you knew
as much as I do. He was not in his right senses that awful day. I
saw him go through the wood. Yes, I was there watching for him,
fearing evil. His face has haunted me ever since. It was the face
of a madman. It was my sin that caused all. Yes, Arnold, mine. You
do not know how vile I am. I gave my father the letter your brother
wrote to my stepmother! A lover’s letter, full of despairing love.
_That_ maddened him, as it had maddened me. He was not in his right
mind that day. He has never been the same man since--gloomy, austere,
set against those he had loved before. You cannot conceive how great
a change there has been in him. We who have lived with him know and
feel it. On my knees here, before God, I do not believe that my
father was responsible for his acts that day.’
Arnold raised her from her knees, and put her in the arm-chair by the
open window. She was almost fainting, but the brave spirit struggled
with bodily weakness.
Arnold paced the room for a little while deep in thought.
‘What am I to do, Naomi?’ he asked at last. ‘I love you--would lay
down my life for you; but I owe a duty to my brother. That is a
solemn charge. He loved me--was so good to me. I have his letter
summoning me home, full of affection, overflowing with generosity.
What am I to do, Naomi? Counsel me, if you can. You loved him?’
‘Loved him? Yes; it was my love that made me mad with jealousy; it
was my love that rose up against him and destroyed him. If you must
have a life for his life, take mine. Yes, Arnold, take mine. I am
most guilty. It was my jealousy that killed him.’
‘Naomi, we are all most miserable. I can do nothing; I feel myself
tied and bound. Either way there is wrong and misery. I love you,
and am miserable in loving you. I have my brother’s death to avenge,
yet cannot bring myself to injure your father. O my love, my love!
your sad accusing face has haunted me ever since that night when you
turned and looked at me at the chapel-door. What can I do?’
‘Forgive,’ said Naomi solemnly; ‘that is what the Gospel teaches
us--to forgive our enemies, even the enemies who have injured those
we love. We can never err in being merciful. “How often shall my
brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seventy times seven.”
That must mean pardon for wrongs man thinks unpardonable.’
‘You can teach me to believe anything, Naomi. I am like a child in
your hands.’
‘May God teach you to judge and act wisely! He will not inspire you
with thoughts of vengeance. He has said, “Vengeance is mine, I will
repay.” My unhappy father has suffered for his sin, and will continue
to suffer till death brings him peace; but I know in my heart that
God will forgive him.’
‘And if God can forgive, erring man should not be obstinately
unforgiving. That is what you would say, Naomi. We have an
illimitable faith in God’s capacity to pardon, yet find it so hard,
sinners as we are, to forgive a fellow-sinner. It is a dark problem.’
‘Pray that you may understand God’s will, Arnold. He will lead and
uphold you.’
‘No; earthly passion will sway me. It is my love for you urges me to
forgive your father.’
‘I would have you act from a higher light. I will leave you to seek
a better guidance,’ Naomi answered, with gentle reproachfulness.
She felt that her father was secure from any violence of Arnold’s
after this interview. She left him full of faith that the right
guidance would come, that the vengeful spirit which had threatened
Joshua with ruin and death would be calmed and appeased. She knew
that Arnold loved her; and though all thoughts of herself were vague
and secondary at such a crisis of her father’s fate, she was glad of
Arnold’s love, for her father’s sake.