MY MOTHER.
I was relieved from my embarrassing situation by a message from my
mother. She was ill, and wished to see me, begging me to return home
without a moment's delay.
"Ah, poor woman! This is a sad judgment--a heavy blow to her. She must
feel this bad enough," said one of the old servants. "Yes, yes, Noah,
lose no time in going home to comfort your mother."
I gazed from one to the other in blank astonishment. They shook their
heads significantly. I hurried away without asking or comprehending what
they meant.
As I walked rapidly home, I pondered over their strange conduct. Beyond
my losing my situation of gamekeeper and porter to the lodge, I could
not see in what way the death of Mr. Carlos should so terribly affect my
mother, without she suspected that I was his murderer. Guilt is
naturally timid; but my plans had been laid with such caution and
secrecy, and carried out so well, that it was almost next to an
impossibility for her to suspect a thing in itself so monstrously
improbable.
The murder had been an impulsive, not a premeditated act.
Four-and-twenty hours ago I would have shot the man who could have
thought me capable of perpetrating such a deed.
The clocks in the village were striking eight when I entered the lodge.
My mother was sitting in her easy chair, supported by pillows. Her face
was deathly pale, and she had been crying violently. Two women, our
nearest neighbours, were standing by her side, bathing her wrists and
temples with hartshorn.
"Oh, Noe," exclaimed Mrs. Jones, "I'm glad thee be come to thy mother.
She hath been in fits ever since she heard the dreadful news."
"We could not persuade her that you were safe," said Mrs. Smith. "She
will be content when she sees you herself."
"Mother,"--and I went up to her and kissed her rigid brow--"are you
better now?"
She took my hand and clasped it tightly between her own, but made no
reply. Her face became convulsed, the tears flowed over her cheeks like
rain, and she fainted in my arms.
"She is dying!" screamed both women.
"She will be better presently," I said. "Open the window--give me a
glass of water! There--there, she is coming to! Speak to me, dear
Mother!"
"Is it true, Noah?" she gasped out, but broke down several times before
she could make her meaning plain. "Is he--is the Squire
dead?--murdered?"
"Too true, Mother! I have just helped to carry the body up to the Hall."
"Oh, oh!" she groaned, rocking herself to and fro in a strange agony; "I
hoped it had been false."
"It is a shocking piece of business--but why should it affect you in
this terrible way?"
"That's what I say," cried Mrs. Jones. "It do seem so strange to us that
she should take on in this here way for a mere stranger."
"Don't ask me any questions, Noah," said my mother, in a low, firm
voice. "I am better now. The sight of you has revived me; and these kind
neighbours may return home."
"At ten o'clock the magistrates meet at the Market Hall to examine the
prisoners," I said, "and I must be there, to make a deposition of what I
know. I can stay with you till then."
"Oh, Noe! thee must tell us all about it!" said Mrs. Smith, who was
dying with curiosity. "How did it come about?"
I was not prepared for this fresh agony; but I saw that there was no
getting rid of our troublesome visitors without endeavouring to satisfy
their insatiable greed for news; and I went through the dreadful task
with more nerve than I expected. My mother listened to the recital with
breathless interest, and the women clung to me with open eyes and mouth,
as if their very life depended upon my words, often interrupting me with
uncouth exclamations of surprise and horror. At length all was told that
I could tell. My mother again broke into passionate tears.
"Poor Mrs. Martin!" she sobbed, "how dreadful it must be to her. I pity
her from my very soul!"
I had never given Martin's unfortunate mother a single thought. I was
not naturally cruel, and this planted a fresh arrow in my heart.
"It is about eight years ago that she lost her husband," said neighbour
Smith. "He died from the bite of a mad dog. He was the 'Squire's
gamekeeper then. Little Sally was not born until five months after her
father's death. I don't know how the widow has contrived to scratch
along, and keep out of the workhouse. But she was always a hard-working
woman. She had no friend like the Squire, to take _her_ by the hand and
give her son a genteel education. She did get along, however, and sent
that Bill to Mr. Bullen's school; but she half starved herself to do
it--and what good? He has been a world of trouble to her, and almost
broke her heart before he run off to 'Meriky. This fresh misfortune
will go nigh to kill her outright."
"And was it to add to this poor devoted creature's sorrows," I asked
myself, "that I was prepared to give false evidence against her son?"
For well I knew, that his life depended upon that evidence.
For Martin I felt no pity. His death never filled me with remorse like
the murder of the 'Squire. He was born for the gallows. I had only
forestalled him in the deed that would send him to the grave. He had
sought the spot with the intention to rob and kill. I had no doubts on
that head; and I persuaded myself that he had richly merited the fate
that awaited him. But the grief of his unhappy mother awakened a pang in
my breast that was not so easily assuaged.
The women at length took their leave, and I was alone with my mother.
For some minutes she remained silent, her hands pressed tightly over her
breast, and her tear-swollen eyes fixed mournfully on the ground.
"Noah," she said, at length, slowly raising her head, and looking me
earnestly in the face, "do you think that the family would allow me to
look at the corpse?"
I actually started with horror. I felt the blood recede from my cheeks,
and a cold chill creep from my hair downwards.
"Good God! Mother, what should make you wish to see him? He is a
frightful spectacle!--so frightful that I would not look at him again
for worlds!"
"Oh," groaned my mother, "it is hard to part from him for ever, without
one last look!"
"Mother, Mother!" I cried--while a horrid suspicion darted through, my
brain--"what is the meaning of this strange conduct, and still stranger
words? In the name of Heaven! what was Squire Carlos to you?"
"Noah, he was your father!" returned my mother, slowly and solemnly. "I
need not tell you what he was to me."
Had she stabbed me with a red-hot knife, the effect would have been less
painful.
"My father!" I cried, with a yell of agony, as I sank down, stunned with
horror, at her feet. "Mother!--Mother! for my sake--for your own sake,
recal those dreadful words!"
Some minutes elapsed before I again awoke to the consciousness of my
terrible guilt. My crime appeared to me in a new aspect--an aspect that
froze my soul, and iced the warm stream of my young blood with despair.
I had been excited--agitated--almost maddened, with the certainty of
being a murderer; but there was something of human passion in those
tumultuous feelings. But the certainty that I was not only a murderer,
but a parricide,--had killed my own father for the sake of a few hundred
pounds, which I now knew that I could never enjoy, chilled me into a
stupid, hardened apathy. There could be no forgiveness for a crime like
mine, neither in this world--nor in the world to come.
I could have cursed my wretched mother for having so long concealed from
me an important fact, which, if known, had saved the life of her
worthless paramour. Her silence might have been the effect of shame. But
no--when I recalled the frequency of Mr. Carlos's visits, his uniform
kindness to me, the very last conversation I held with him, and the dark
hints that from time to time Bill Martin had so insultingly thrown out,
I felt convinced that she had all along been living with him on terms of
abandoned intimacy, and that her crime had been the parent of my own.
Yet, in spite of these bitter recriminations, when I raised my eyes to
her, and met her sad, pleading, tearful glance, all my love for her
returned, and, clasping her knees, as I still sat upon the ground at her
feet, I said, "Mother, why did you keep this guilty secret from me for
so many years? I should have felt and acted very differently towards
that unhappy man, if I had known that he was my father."
"Noah, it is hard to acknowledge one's sin to one's own child. It is a
sin, however, that I have been bitterly punished for committing."
"But you still continued to live on those terms with him?"
"Alas! Noah, I loved him!"
She threw her apron over her head, and sobbed as if her heart would
burst.
"I will show you, Mother, how one crime produces another," I was about
to say, when a loud rap at the door recalled my self-possession; and I
was summoned to attend the sitting of the magistrates, and tell all I
knew about the murder.