THE WANDERER.
'Tis a naughty night to swim in.
_King Lear._
There was a wild uncertainty about Mowbray's ideas, after he started
from a feverish sleep on the morning succeeding this memorable
interview, that his sister, whom he really loved as much as he was
capable of loving any thing, had dishonoured him and her name; and the
horrid recollection of their last interview was the first idea which his
waking imagination was thrilled with. Then came Touchwood's tale of
exculpation--and he persuaded himself, or strove to do so, that Clara
must have understood the charge he had brought against her as referring
to her attachment to Tyrrel, and its fatal consequences. Again, still he
doubted how that could be--still feared that there must be more behind
than her reluctance to confess the fraud which had been practised on her
by Bulmer; and then, again, he strengthened himself in the first and
more pleasing opinion, by recollecting that, averse as she was to
espouse the person he proposed to her, it must have appeared to her the
completion of ruin, if he, Mowbray, should obtain knowledge of the
clandestine marriage.
"Yes--O yes," he said to himself, "she would think that this story would
render me more eager in the rascal's interest, as the best way of
hushing up such a discreditable affair--faith, and she would have judged
right too; for, had he actually been Lord Etherington, I do not see what
else she could have done. But, not being Lord Etherington, and an
anointed scoundrel into the bargain, I will content myself with
cudgelling him to death so soon as I can get out of the guardianship of
this old, meddling, obstinate, self-willed, busybody.--Then, what is to
be done for Clara?--This mock marriage was a mere bubble, and both
parties must draw stakes. She likes this grave Don, who proves to be the
stick of the right tree, after all--so do not I, though there be
something lordlike about him. I was sure a strolling painter could not
have carried it off so. She may marry him, I suppose, if the law is not
against it--then she has the earldom, and the Oaklands, and Nettlewood,
all at once.--Gad, we should come in winners, after all--and, I dare
say, this old boy Touchwood is as rich as a Jew--worth a hundred
thousand at least--He is too peremptory to be cut up for sixpence under
a hundred thousand.--And he talks of putting me to rights--I must not
wince--must stand still to be curried a little--Only, I wish the law may
permit Clara's being married to this other earl.--A woman cannot marry
two brothers, that is certain:--but then, if she is not married to the
one of them in good and lawful form, there can be no bar to her marrying
the other, I should think--I hope the lawyers will talk no nonsense
about it--I hope Clara will have no foolish scruples.--But, by my word,
the first thing I have to hope is, that the thing is true, for it comes
through but a suspicious channel. I'll away to Clara instantly--get the
truth out of her--and consider what is to be done."
Thus partly thought and partly spoke the young Laird of St. Ronan's,
hastily dressing himself, in order to enquire into the strange chaos of
events which perplexed his imagination.
When he came down to the parlour where they had supped last night, and
where breakfast was prepared this morning, he sent for a girl who acted
as his sister's immediate attendant, and asked, "if Miss Mowbray was yet
stirring?"
The girl answered, "she had not rung her bell."
"It is past her usual hour," said Mowbray, "but she was disturbed last
night. Go, Martha, tell her to get up instantly--say I have excellent
good news for her--or, if her head aches, I will come and tell them to
her before she rises--go like lightning."
Martha went, and returned in a minute or two. "I cannot make my mistress
hear, sir, knock as loud as I will. I wish," she added, with that love
of evil presage which is common in the lower ranks, "that Miss Clara may
be well, for I never knew her sleep so sound."
Mowbray jumped from the chair into which he had thrown himself, ran
through the gallery, and knocked smartly at his sister's door; there was
no answer. "Clara, dear Clara!--Answer me but one word--say but you are
well. I frightened you last night--I had been drinking wine--I was
violent--forgive me!--Come, do not be sulky--speak but a single
word--say but you are well."
He made the pauses longer betwixt every branch of his address, knocked
sharper and louder, listened more anxiously for an answer; at length he
attempted to open the door, but found it locked, or otherwise secured.
"Does Miss Mowbray always lock her door?" he asked the girl.
"Never knew her to do it before, sir; she leaves it open that I may call
her, and open the window-shutters."
She had too good reason for precaution last night, thought her brother,
and then remembered having heard her bar the door.
"Come, Clara," he continued, greatly agitated, "do not be silly; if you
will not open the door, I must force it, that's all; for how can I tell
but that you are sick, and unable to answer?--if you are only sullen,
say so.--She returns no answer," he said, turning to the domestic, who
was now joined by Touchwood.
Mowbray's anxiety was so great, that it prevented his taking any notice
of his guest, and he proceeded to say, without regarding his presence,
"What is to be done?--she may be sick--she may be asleep--she may have
swooned; if I force the door, it may terrify her to death in the present
weak state of her nerves.--Clara, dear Clara! do but speak a single
word, and you shall remain in your own room as long as you please."
There was no answer. Miss Mowbray's maid, hitherto too much fluttered
and alarmed to have much presence of mind, now recollected a back-stair
which communicated with her mistress's room from the garden, and
suggested she might have gone out that way.
"Gone out," said Mowbray, in great anxiety, and looking at the heavy
fog, or rather small rain, which blotted the November morning,--"Gone
out, and in weather like this!--But we may get into her room from the
back-stair."
So saying, and leaving his guest to follow or remain as he thought
proper, he flew rather than walked to the garden, and found the private
door which led into it, from the bottom of the back-stair above
mentioned, was wide open. Full of vague, but fearful apprehensions, he
rushed up to the door of his sister's apartment, which opened from her
dressing-room to the landing-place of the stair; it was ajar, and that
which communicated betwixt the bedroom and dressing-room was half open.
"Clara, Clara!" exclaimed Mowbray, invoking her name rather in an agony
of apprehension, than as any longer hoping for a reply. And his
apprehension was but too prophetic.
Miss Mowbray was not in that apartment; and, from the order in which it
was found, it was plain she had neither undressed on the preceding
night, nor occupied the bed. Mowbray struck his forehead in an agony of
remorse and fear. "I have terrified her to death," he said; "she has
fled into the woods, and perished there!"
Under the influence of this apprehension, Mowbray, after another hasty
glance around the apartment, as if to assure himself that Clara was not
there, rushed again into the dressing-room, almost overturning the
traveller, who, in civility, had not ventured to enter the inner
apartment. "You are as mad as a _Hamako_,"[II-11] said the traveller; "let
us consult together, and I am sure I can contrive"----
"Oh, d--n your contrivance!" said Mowbray, forgetting all proposed
respect in his natural impatience, aggravated by his alarm; "if you had
behaved straight-forward, and like a man of common sense, this would not
have happened!"
"God forgive you, young man, if your reflections are unjust," said the
traveller, quitting the hold he had laid upon Mowbray's coat; "and God
forgive me too, if I have done wrong while endeavouring to do for the
best!--But may not Miss Mowbray have gone down to the Well? I will order
my horses, and set off instantly."
"Do, do," said Mowbray, recklessly; "I thank you, I thank you;" and
hastily traversing the garden, as if desirous to get rid at once of his
visitor and his own thoughts, he took the shortest road to a little
postern-gate, which led into the extensive copsewood, through some part
of which Clara had caused a walk to be cut to a little summer-house
built of rough shingles, covered with creeping shrubs.
As Mowbray hastened through the garden, he met the old man by whom it
was kept, a native of the south country, and an old dependent on the
family. "Have you seen my sister?" said Mowbray, hurrying his words on
each other with the eagerness of terror.
"What's your wull, St. Ronan's?" answered the old man, at once dull of
hearing, and slow of apprehension.
"Have you seen Miss Clara?" shouted Mowbray, and muttered an oath or two
at the gardener's stupidity.
"In troth have I," replied the gardener, deliberately; "what suld ail
me to see Miss Clara, St. Ronan's?"
"When, and where?" eagerly demanded the querist.
"Ou, just yestreen, after tey-time--afore ye cam hame yoursell galloping
sae fast," said old Joseph.
"I am as stupid as he, to put off my time in speaking to such an old
cabbage-stock!" said Mowbray, and hastened on to the postern-gate
already mentioned, leading from the garden into what was usually called
Miss Clara's walk. Two or three domestics, whispering to each other, and
with countenances that showed grief, fear, and suspicion, followed their
master, desirous to be employed, yet afraid to force their services on
the fiery young man.
At the little postern he found some trace of her he sought. The pass-key
of Clara was left in the lock. It was then plain that she must have
passed that way; but at what hour, or for what purpose, Mowbray dared
not conjecture. The path, after running a quarter of a mile or more
through an open grove of oaks and sycamores, attained the verge of the
large brook, and became there steep and rocky, difficult to the infirm,
and alarming to the nervous; often approaching the brink of a
precipitous ledge of rock, which in this place overhung the stream, in
some places brawling and foaming in hasty current, and in others seeming
to slumber in deep and circular eddies. The temptations which this
dangerous scene must have offered an excited and desperate spirit, came
on Mowbray like the blight of the Simoom, and he stood a moment to
gather breath and overcome these horrible anticipations, ere he was able
to proceed. His attendants felt the same apprehension. "Puir thing--puir
thing!--O, God send she may not have been left to hersell!--God send she
may have been upholden!" were whispered by Patrick to the maidens, and
by them to each other.
At this moment the old gardener was heard behind them, shouting,
"Master--St. Ronan's--Master--I have fund--I have fund"----
"Have you found my sister?" exclaimed the brother, with breathless
anxiety.
The old man did not answer till he came up, and then, with his usual
slowness of delivery, he replied to his master's repeated enquiries,
"Na, I haena fund Miss Clara, but I hae fund something ye wad be wae to
lose--your braw hunting-knife."
He put the implement into the hand of its owner, who, recollecting the
circumstances under which he had flung it from him last night, and the
now too probable consequences of that interview, bestowed on it a deep
imprecation, and again hurled it from him into the brook. The domestics
looked at each other, and recollecting each at the same time that the
knife was a favourite tool of their master, who was rather curious in
such articles, had little doubt that his mind was affected, in a
temporary way at least, by his anxiety on his sister's account. He saw
their confused and inquisitive looks, and assuming as much composure and
presence of mind as he could command, directed Martha, and her female
companions, to return and search the walks on the other side of
Shaws-Castle; and, finally, ordered Patrick back to ring the bell,
"which," he said, assuming a confidence that he was far from
entertaining, "might call Miss Mowbray home from some of her long
walks." He farther desired his groom and horses might meet him at the
Clattering Brig, so called from a noisy cascade which was formed by the
brook, above which was stretched a small foot-bridge of planks. Having
thus shaken off his attendants, he proceeded himself, with all the speed
he was capable of exerting, to follow out the path in which he was at
present engaged, which, being a favourite walk with his sister, she
might perhaps have adopted from mere habit, when in a state of mind,
which, he had too much reason to fear, must have put choice out of the
question.
He soon reached the summer-house, which was merely a seat covered
overhead and on the sides, open in front, and neatly paved with pebbles.
This little bower was perched, like a hawk's nest, almost upon the edge
of a projecting crag, the highest point of the line of rock which we
have noticed; and had been selected by poor Clara, on account of the
prospect which it commanded down the valley. One of her gloves lay on
the small rustic table in the summer-house. Mowbray caught it eagerly
up. It was drenched with wet--the preceding day had been dry; so that,
had she forgot it there in the morning, or in the course of the day, it
could not have been in that state. She had certainly been there during
the night, when it rained heavily.
Mowbray, thus assured that Clara had been in this place, while her
passions and fears were so much afloat as they must have been at her
flight from her father's house, cast a hurried and terrified glance from
the brow of the precipice into the deep stream that eddied below. It
seemed to him that, in the sullen roar of the water, he heard the last
groans of his sister--the foam-flakes caught his eye, as if they were a
part of her garments. But a closer examination showed that there was no
appearance of such a catastrophe. Descending the path on the other side
of the bower, he observed a foot-print in a place where the clay was
moist and tenacious, which, from the small size, and the shape of the
shoe, it appeared to him must be a trace of her whom he sought. He
hurried forward, therefore, with as much speed, as yet permitted him to
look out keenly for similar impressions, of which it seemed to him he
remarked several, although less perfect than the former, being much
obliterated by the quantity of rain that had since fallen,--a
circumstance seeming to prove that several hours had elapsed since the
person had passed.
At length, through the various turnings and windings of a long and
romantic path, Mowbray found himself, without having received any
satisfactory intelligence, by the side of the brook, called St. Ronan's
Burn, at the place where it was crossed by foot-passengers, by the
Clattering Brig, and by horsemen through a ford a little lower. At this
point the fugitive might have either continued her wanderings through
her paternal woods, by a path which, after winding about a mile,
returned to Shaws-Castle, or she might have crossed the bridge, and
entered a broken horse-way, common to the public, leading to the Aultoun
of St. Ronan's.
Mowbray, after a moment's consideration, concluded that the last was her
most probable option.--He mounted his horse, which the groom had brought
down according to order, and commanding the man to return by the
footpath, which he himself could not examine, he proceeded to ride
towards the ford. The brook was swollen during the night, and the groom
could not forbear intimating to his master, that there was considerable
danger in attempting to cross it. But Mowbray's mind and feelings were
too high-strung to permit him to listen to cautious counsel. He spurred
the snorting and reluctant horse into the torrent, though the water,
rising high on the upper side, broke both over the pommel and the croupe
of his saddle. It was by exertion of great strength and sagacity, that
the good horse kept the ford-way. Had the stream forced him down among
the rocks, which lie below the crossing-place, the consequences must
have been fatal. Mowbray, however, reached the opposite side in safety,
to the joy and admiration of the servant, who stood staring at him
during the adventure. He then rode hastily towards the Aultoun,
determined, if he could not hear tidings of his sister in that village,
that he would spread the alarm, and institute a general search after
her, since her elopement from Shaws-Castle could, in that case, no
longer be concealed. We must leave him, however, in his present state of
uncertainty, in order to acquaint our readers with the reality of those
evils, which his foreboding mind and disturbed conscience could only
anticipate.
FOOTNOTE:
[II-11] A fool is so termed in Turkey.