“There can be no doubt whatever, that she was infected with Typhus

at the hospital. You may remember my telling you, how her agitation

appeared to have deprived her of self-possession, when she entered the

ward; and how she ran to the wrong bed, before the nurse could stop her.

The man whom she thus mistook for Turner, was suffering from fever which

had not then specifically declared itself; but which did so declare

itself, as a Typhus fever, on the morning when you and your brother came

to the hospital. This man’s disorder must have been infectious when the

young woman stooped down close over him, under the impression that he

was the person she had come to see. Although she started back at once,

on discovering her mistake, she had breathed the infection into her

system--her mental agitation at the time, accompanied (as I have since

understood) by some physical weakness, rendering her specially liable to

the danger to which she had accidentally exposed herself.

“Since the first symptoms of her disease appeared, on Saturday last, I

cannot find that any error has been committed in the medical treatment,

as reported to me. I remained some time by her bedside to-day, observing

her. The delirium which is, more or less, an invariable result of

Typhus, is particularly marked in her case, and manifests itself both

by speech and gesture. It has been found impossible to quiet her, by

any means hitherto tried. While I was watching by her, she never ceased

calling on your name, and entreating to see you. I am informed by her

medical attendant, that her wanderings have almost invariably taken this

direction for the last four-and-twenty hours. Occasionally she mixes

other names with yours, and mentions them in terms of abhorrence; but

her persistency in calling for your presence, is so remarkable that I

am tempted, merely from what I have heard myself; to suggest that you

really should go to her, on the bare chance that you might exercise some

tranquillising influence. At the same time, if you fear infection, or

for any private reasons (into which I have neither the right nor the

wish to inquire) feel unwilling to take the course I have pointed out,

do not by any means consider it your duty to accede to my proposal. I

can conscientiously assure you that duty is not involved in it.

“I have, however, another suggestion to make, which is of a positive

nature, and which I am sure will meet with your approval. It is, that

her parents, or some of her other relations, if her parents are not

alive, should be informed of her situation. Possibly, you may know

something of her connections, and can therefore do this good office. She

is dying in a strange place, among people who avoid her as they would

avoid a pestilence. Even though it be only to bury her, some relation

ought to be immediately summoned to her bed-side.

“I shall visit her twice to-morrow, in the morning and at night. If you

are not willing to risk seeing her (and I repeat that it is in no sense

imperative that you should combat such unwillingness), perhaps you will

communicate with me at my private address.

“I remain, dear Sir,

“Faithfully yours,

“JOHN BERNARD.

“P. S.--I open my letter again, to inform you that Turner, acting

against all advice, has left the hospital to-day. He attempted to go

on Tuesday last, when, I believe, he first received information of the

young woman’s serious illness, but was seized with a violent attack of

giddiness, on attempting to walk, and fell down just outside the door of

the ward. On this second occasion, however, he has succeeded in getting

away without any accident--as far, at least, as the persons employed

about the hospital can tell.”

When the letter fell from my trembling hand, when I first asked of my

own heart the fearful question:--“Have I, to whom the mere thought of

ever seeing this woman again has been as a pollution to shrink from, the

strength to stand by her death-bed, the courage to see her die?”--then,

and not till then, did I really know how suffering had fortified, while

it had humbled me; how affliction has the power to purify, as well as to

pain.

All bitter memory of the ill that she had done me, of the misery I had

suffered at her hands, lost its hold on my mind. Once more, her mother’s

last words of earthly lament--“Oh, who will pray for her when I am

gone!” seemed to be murmuring in my ear--murmuring in harmony with

the divine words in which the Voice from the Mount of Olives taught

forgiveness of injuries to all mankind.

She was dying: dying among strangers in the pining madness of fever--and

the one being of all who knew her, whose presence at her bedside

might yet bring calmness to her last moments, and give her quietly and

tenderly to death, was the man whom she had pitilessly deceived and

dishonoured, whose youth she had ruined, whose hopes she had wrecked

for ever. Strangely had destiny brought us together--terribly had it

separated us--awfully would it now unite us again, at the end!

What were my wrongs, heavy as they had been; what my sufferings,

poignant as they still were, that they should stand between this dying

woman, and the last hope of awakening her to the consciousness that

she was going before the throne of God? The sole resource for her which

human skill and human pity could now suggest, embraced the sole chance

that she might still be recovered for repentance, before she was

resigned to death. How did I know, but that in those ceaseless cries

which had uttered my name, there spoke the last earthly anguish of

the tortured spirit, calling upon me for one drop of water to cool its

burning guilt--one drop from the waters of Peace?

I took up Mr. Bernard’s letter from the floor on which it had fallen,

and re-directed it to my brother; simply writing on a blank place in the

inside, “I have gone to soothe her last moments.” Before I departed, I

wrote to her father, and summoned him to her bedside. The guilt of his

absence--if his heartless and hardened nature did not change towards

her--would now rest with him, and not with me. I forbore from thinking

how he would answer my letter; for I remembered his written words to my

brother, declaring that he would accuse his daughter of having caused

her mother’s death; and I suspected him even then, of wishing to shift

the shame of his conduct towards his unhappy wife from himself to his

child.

After writing this second letter, I set forth instantly for the house

to which Mr. Bernard had directed me. No thought of myself; no thought,

even, of the peril suggested by the ominous disclosure about Mannion,

in the postscript to the surgeon’s letter, ever crossed my mind. In the

great stillness, in the heavenly serenity that had come to my spirit,

the wasting fire of every sensation which was only of this world, seemed

quenched for ever.

It was eleven o’clock when I arrived at the house. A slatternly, sulky

woman opened the door to me. “Oh! I suppose you’re another doctor,”

she muttered, staring at me with scowling eyes. “I wish you were the

undertaker, to get her out of my house before we all catch our deaths of

her! There! there’s the other doctor coming down stairs; he’ll show you

the room--I won’t go near it.”

As I took the candle from her hand, I saw that Mr. Bernard was

approaching me from the stairs.

“You can do no good, I am afraid,” he said, “but I am glad you have

come.”

“There is no hope, then?”

“In my opinion, none. Turner came here this morning, whether she

recognised him, or not, in her delirium, I cannot say; but she grew so

much worse in his presence, that I insisted on his not seeing her

again, except under medical permission. Just now, there is no one in the

room--are you willing to go up stairs at once?”

“Does she still speak of me in her wanderings?”

“Yes, as incessantly as ever.”

“Then I am ready to go to her bedside.”

“Pray believe that I feel deeply what a sacrifice you are making. Since

I wrote to you, much that she has said in her delirium has told me”--(he

hesitated)--“has told me more, I am afraid, than you would wish me to

have known, as a comparative stranger to you. I will only say, that

secrets unconsciously disclosed on the death-bed are secrets sacred

to me, as they are to all who pursue my calling; and that what I have

unavoidably heard above stairs, is doubly sacred in my estimation, as

affecting a near and dear relative of one of my oldest friends.” He

paused, and took my hand very kindly; then added: “I am sure you will

think yourself rewarded for any trial to your feelings to-night, if you

can only remember in years to come, that your presence quieted her in

her last moments!”

I felt his sympathy and delicacy too strongly to thank him in words; I

could only _look_ my gratitude as he asked me to follow him up stairs.

We entered the room softly. Once more, and for the last time in this

world, I stood in the presence of Margaret Sherwin.

Not even to see her, as I had last seen her, was such a sight of misery

as to behold her now, forsaken on her deathbed, to look at her, as she

lay with her head turned from me, fretfully covering and uncovering her

face with the loose tresses of her long black hair, and muttering my

name incessantly in her fever-dream: “Basil! Basil! Basil! I’ll never

leave off calling for him, till he comes. Basil! Basil! Where is he? Oh,

where, where, where!”

“He is here,” said the doctor, taking the candle from my hand, and

holding it, so that the light fell full on my face. “Look at her and

speak to her as usual, when she turns round,” he whispered to me.

Still she never moved; still those hoarse, fierce, quick tones--that

voice, once the music that my heart beat to; now the discord that it

writhed under--muttered faster and faster: “Basil! Basil! Bring him

here! bring me Basil!”

“He is here,” repeated Mr. Bernard loudly. “Look! look up at him!”

She turned in an instant, and tore the hair back from her face. For a

moment, I forced myself to look at her; for a moment, I confronted the

smouldering fever in her cheeks; the glare of the bloodshot eyes;

the distortion of the parched lips; the hideous clutching of the

outstretched fingers at the empty air--but the agony of that sight was

more than I could endure: I turned away my head, and hid my face in

horror.

“Compose yourself,” whispered the doctor. “Now she is quiet, speak to

her; speak to her before she begins again; call her by her name.”

Her name! Could my lips utter it at such a moment as this?

“Quick! quick!” cried Mr. Bernard. “Try her while you have the chance.”

I struggled against the memories of the past, and spoke to her--God

knows as gently, if not as happily, as in the bygone time!

“Margaret,” I said, “Margaret, you asked for me, and I have come.”

She tossed her arms above her head with a shrill scream, frightfully

prolonged till it ended in low moanings and murmurings; then turned her

face from us again, and pulled her hair over it once more.

“I am afraid she is too far gone,” said the doctor; “but make another

trial.”

“Margaret,” I said again, “have you forgotten me? Margaret!”

She looked at me once more. This time, her dry, dull eyes seemed to

soften, and her fingers twined themselves less passionately in her hair.

She began to laugh--a low, vacant, terrible laugh.

“Yes, yes,” she said, “I know he’s come at last; I can make him do

anything. Get me my bonnet and shawl; any shawl will do, but a mourning

shawl is best, because we are going to the funeral of our wedding. Come,

Basil! let’s go back to the church, and get unmarried again; that’s what

I wanted you for. We don’t care about each other. Robert Mannion wants

me more than you do--he’s not ashamed of me because my father’s a

tradesman; he won’t make believe that he’s in love with me, and then

marry me to spite the pride of his family. Come! I’ll tell the clergyman

to read the service backwards; that makes a marriage no marriage at all,

everybody knows.”

As the last wild words escaped her, some one below stairs called to Mr.

Bernard. He went out for a minute, then returned again, telling me that

he was summoned to a case of sudden illness which he must attend without

a moment’s delay.

“The medical man whom I found here when I first came,” he said, “was

sent for this evening into the country, to be consulted about an

operation, I believe. But if anything happens, I shall be at your

service. There is the address of the house to which I am now going”

(he wrote it down on a card); “you can send, if you want me. I will get

back, however, as soon as possible, and see her again; she seems to be

a little quieter already, and may become quieter still, if you stay

longer. The night-nurse is below--I will send her up as I go downstairs.

Keep the room well ventilated, the windows open as they are now. Don’t

breathe too close to her, and you need fear no infection. Look! her eyes

are still fixed on you. This is the first time I have seen her look in

the same direction for two minutes together; one would think she really

recognised you. Wait till I come back, if you possibly can--I won’t be a

moment longer than I can help.”

He hastily left the room. I turned to the bed, and saw that she was

still looking at me. She had never ceased murmuring to herself while Mr.

Bernard was speaking; and she did not stop when the nurse came in.

The first sight of this woman, on her entrance, sickened and shocked me.

All that was naturally repulsive in her, was made doubly revolting by

the characteristics of the habitual drunkard, lowering and glaring at

me in her purple, bloated face. To see her heavy hands shaking at the

pillow, as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her stand,

alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate blasphemy

in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most horrible of all

mockeries, the most impious of all profanations. No loneliness in the

presence of mortal agony could try me to the quick, as the sight of that

foul old age of degradation and debauchery, defiling the sick room, now

tried me. I determined to wait alone by the bedside till Mr. Bernard

returned.

With some difficulty, I made the wretched drunkard understand that she

might go downstairs again; and that I would call her if she was wanted.

At last, she comprehended my meaning, and slowly quitted the room. The

door closed on her; and I was left alone to watch the last moments of

the woman who had ruined me!

As I sat down near the open window, the sounds outside in the street

told of the waning of the night. There was an echo of many footsteps, a

hoarse murmur of conflicting voices, now near, now afar off. The public

houses were dispersing their drunken crowds--the crowds of a Saturday

night: it was twelve o’clock.

Through those street-sounds of fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth,

the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more

distinctly, more terribly than it had spoken yet.

“I see him,” she said, staring vacantly at me, and moving her hands

slowly to and fro in the air. “I see him! But he’s a long way off; he

can’t hear our secrets, and he does not suspect you as mother does.

Don’t tell me that about him any more; my flesh creeps at it! What are

you looking at me in that way for? You make me feel on fire. You know

I like you, because I _must_ like you; because I can’t help it. It’s no

use saying hush: I tell you he can’t hear us, and can’t see us. He can

see nothing; you make a fool of him, and I make a fool of him. But mind!

I _will_ ride in my own carriage: you must keep things secret enough to

let me do that. I say I _will_ ride in my carriage: and I’ll go where

father walks to business: I don’t care if I splash him with _my_

carriage wheels! I’ll be even with him for some of the passions he’s

been in with me. You see how I’ll go into our shop and order dresses!

(be quiet! I say he can’t hear us). I’ll have velvet where his sister

has silk, and silk where she has muslin: I’m a finer girl than she is,

and I’ll be better dressed. Tell _him_ anything, indeed! What have I

ever let out? It’s not so easy always to make believe I’m in love with

him, after what you have told me. Suppose he found us out?--Rash? I’m

no more rash than you are! Why didn’t you come back from France in time,

and stop it all? Why did you let me marry him? A nice wife I’ve been to

him, and a nice husband he has been to me--a husband who waits a year!

Ha! ha! he calls himself a man, doesn’t he? A husband who waits a year!”

I approached nearer to the bedside, and spoke to her again, in the

hope to win her tenderly towards dreaming of better things. I know not

whether she heard me, but her wild thoughts changed--changed darkly to

later events.

“Beds! beds!” she cried, “beds everywhere, with dying men on them! And

one bed the most terrible of all--look at it! The deformed face, with

the white of the pillow all round it! _His_ face? _his_ face, that

hadn’t a fault in it? Never! It’s the face of a devil; the finger-nails

of the devil are on it! Take me away! drag me out! I can’t move for that

face: it’s always before me: it’s walling me up among the beds: it’s

burning me all over. Water! water! drown me in the sea; drown me deep,

away from the burning face!”

“Hush, Margaret! hush! drink this, and you will be cool again.” I gave

her some lemonade, which stood by the bedside.

“Yes, yes; hush, as you say. Where’s Robert? Robert Mannion? Not here!

then I’ve got a secret for you. When you go home to-night, Basil, and

say your prayers, pray for a storm of thunder and lightning; and pray

that I may be struck dead in it, and Robert too. It’s a fortnight to my

aunt’s party; and in a fortnight you’ll wish us both dead, so you had

better pray for what I tell you in time. We shall make handsome corpses.

Put roses into my coffin--scarlet roses, if you can find any, because

that stands for Scarlet Woman--in the Bible, you know. Scarlet? What do

I care! It’s the boldest colour in the world. Robert will tell you, and

all your family, how many women are as scarlet as I am--virtue wears it

at home, in secret; and vice wears it abroad, in public: that’s the only

difference, he says. Scarlet roses! scarlet roses! throw them into the

coffin by hundreds; smother me up in them; bury me down deep; in the

dark, quiet street--where there’s a broad door-step in front of a house,

and a white, wild face, something like Basil’s, that’s always staring on

the doorstep awfully. Oh, why did I meet him! why did I marry him! oh,

why! why!”

She uttered the last words in slow, measured cadence--the horrible

mockery of a chaunt which she used to play to us at North Villa, on

Sunday evenings. Then her voice sank again; her articulation thickened,

and grew indistinct. It was like the change from darkness to daylight,

in the sight of sleepless eyes, to hear her only murmuring now, after

hearing her last terrible words.

The weary night-time passed on. Longer and longer grew the intervals

of silence between the scattered noises from the streets; less and less

frequent were the sounds of distant carriage-wheels, and the echoing

rapid footsteps of late pleasure-seekers hurrying home. At last, the

heavy tramp of the policeman going his rounds, alone disturbed the

silence of the early morning hours. Still, the voice from the bed

muttered incessantly; but now, in drowsy, languid tones: still, Mr.

Bernard did not return: still the father of the dying girl never came,

never obeyed the letter which summoned him for the last time to her

side.

(There was yet one more among the absent--one from whose approach

the death-bed must be kept sacred; one, whose evil presence was to be

dreaded as a pestilence and a scourge. Mannion!--where was Mannion?)

I sat by the window, resigned to wait in loneliness till the end came,

watching mechanically the vacant eyes that ever watched me--when,

suddenly, the face of Margaret seemed to fade out of my sight. I started

and looked round. The candle, which I had placed at the opposite end of

the room, had burnt down without my noticing it, and was now expiring

in the socket. I ran to light the fresh candle which lay on the table

by its side, but was too late. The wick flickered its last; the room was

left in darkness.

While I felt among the different objects under my hands for a box of

matches: Margaret’s voice strengthened again.

“Innocent! innocent!” I heard her cry mournfully through the darkness.

“I’ll swear I’m innocent, and father is sure to swear it too. Innocent

Margaret! Oh, me! what innocence!”

She repeated these words over and over again, till the hearing them

seemed to bewilder all my senses. I hardly knew what I touched.

Suddenly, my searching hands stopped of themselves, I could not tell

why. Was there some change in the room? Was there more air in it, as if

a door had been opened? Was there something moving over the floor?

Had Margaret left her bed?--No! the mournful voice was speaking

unintermittingly, and speaking from the same distance.

I moved to search for the matches on a chest of drawers, which stood

near the window. Though the morning was at its darkest, and the house

stood midway between two gas-lamps, there was a glimmering of light in

this place. I looked back into the room from the window, and thought

I saw something shadowy moving near the bed. “Take him away!” I heard

Margaret scream in her wildest tones. “His hands are on me: he’s feeling

my face, to feel if I’m dead!”

I ran to her, striking against some piece of furniture in the darkness.

Something passed swiftly between me and the bed, as I got near it. I

thought I heard a door close. Then there was silence for a moment; and

then, as I stretched out my hands, my right hand encountered the

little table placed by Margaret’s side, and the next moment I felt the

match-box that had been left on it.

As I struck a light, her voice repeated close at my ear:

“His hands are on me: he’s feeling my face to feel if I’m dead!”

The match flared up. As I carried it to the candle, I looked round, and

noticed for the first time that there was a second door, at the further

corner of the room, which lighted some inner apartment through glass

panes at the top. When I tried this door, it was locked on the inside,

and the room beyond was dark.

Dark and silent. But was no one there, hidden in that darkness and

silence? Was there any doubt now, that stealthy feet had approached

Margaret, that stealthy hands had touched her, while the room was in

obscurity?--Doubt? There was none on that point, none on any other.

Suspicion shaped itself into conviction in an instant, and identified

the stranger who had passed in the darkness between me and the bedside,

with the man whose presence I had dreaded, as the presence of an evil

spirit in the chamber of death.

He was waiting secretly in the house--waiting for her last moments;

listening for her last words; watching his opportunity, perhaps, to

enter the room again, and openly profane it by his presence! I placed

myself by the door, resolved, if he approached, to thrust him back, at

any hazard, from the bedside. How long I remained absorbed in watching

before the darkness of the inner room, I know not--but some time must

have elapsed before the silence around me forced itself suddenly on my

attention. I turned towards Margaret; and, in an instant, all previous

thoughts were suspended in my mind, by the sight that now met my eyes.

She had altered completely. Her hands, so restless hitherto, lay quite

still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of

her face had changed--the fever-traces remained on every feature, and

yet the fever-look was gone. Her eyes were almost closed; her quick

breathing had grown calm and slow. I touched her pulse; it was beating

with a wayward, fluttering gentleness. What did this striking alteration

indicate? Recovery? Was it possible? As the idea crossed my mind, every

one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation of watching

her face; I could not have stirred an instant from the bed, for worlds.

The earliest dawn of day was glimmering faintly at the window, before

another change appeared--before she drew a long, sighing breath, and

slowly opened her eyes on mine. Their first look was very strange and

startling to behold; for it was the look that was natural to her; the

calm look of consciousness, restored to what it had always been in

the past time. It lasted only for a moment. She recognised me; and,

instantly, an expression of anguish and shame flew over the first terror

and surprise of her face. She struggled vainly to lift her hands--so

busy all through the night; so idle now! A faint moan of supplication

breathed from her lips; and she slowly turned her head on the pillow, so

as to hide her face from my sight.

“Oh, my God! my God!” she murmured, in low, wailing tones, “I’ve broken

his heart, and he still comes here to be kind to me! This is worse than

death! I’m too bad to be forgiven--leave me! leave me!--oh, Basil, leave

me to die!”

I spoke to her; but desisted almost immediately--desisted even from

uttering her name. At the mere sound of my voice, her suffering rose to

agony; the wild despair of the soul wrestling awfully with the writhing

weakness of the body, uttered itself in words and cries horrible, beyond

all imagination, to hear. I sank down on my knees by the bedside; the

strength which had sustained me for hours, gave way in an instant, and

I burst into a passion of tears, as my spirit poured from my lips in

supplication for hers--tears that did not humiliate me; for I knew,

while I shed them, that I had forgiven her!

The dawn brightened. Gradually, as the fair light of the new day flowed

in lovely upon her bed; as the fresh morning breeze lifted tenderly and

playfully the scattered locks of her hair that lay over the pillow--so,

the calmness began to come back to her voice and the stillness of repose

to her limbs. But she never turned her face to me again; never, when the

wild words of her despair grew fewer and fainter; never, when the last

faint supplication to me, to leave her to die forsaken as she deserved,

ended mournfully in a long, moaning gasp for breath. I waited after

this--waited a long time--then spoke to her softly--then waited once

more; hearing her still breathe, but slowly and more slowly with every

minute--then spoke to her for the second time, louder than before. She

never answered, and never moved. Was she sleeping? I could not tell.

Some influence seemed to hold me back from going to the other side of

the bed, to look at her face, as it lay away from me, almost hidden in

the pillow.

The light strengthened faster, and grew mellow with the clear beauty

of the morning sunshine. I heard the sound of rapid footsteps advancing

along the street; they stopped under the window: and a voice which I

recognized, called me by my name. I looked out: Mr. Bernard had returned

at last.

“I could not get back sooner,” he said; “the case was desperate, and I

was afraid to leave it. You will find a key on the chimney-piece--throw

it out to me, and I can let myself in; I told them not to bolt the door

before I went out.”

I obeyed his directions. When he entered the room, I thought Margaret

moved a little, and signed to him with my hand to make no noise. He

looked towards the bed without any appearance of surprise, and asked me

in a whisper when the change had come over her, and how. I told him

very briefly, and inquired whether he had known of such changes in other

cases, like hers.

“Many,” he answered, “many changes just as extraordinary, which have

raised hopes that I never knew realised. Expect the worst from the

change you have witnessed; it is a fatal sign.”

Still, in spite of what he said, it seemed as if he feared to wake her;

for he spoke in his lowest tones, and walked very softly when he went

close to the bedside.

He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to feel her pulse, and looked

in the direction of the glass door--listened attentively--and said, as

if to himself--“I thought I heard some one moving in that room, but I

suppose I am mistaken; nobody can be up in the house yet.” With those

words he looked down at Margaret, and gently parted back her hair from

her forehead.

“Don’t disturb her,” I whispered, “she is asleep; surely she is asleep!”

He paused before he answered me, and placed his hand on her heart. Then

softly drew up the bed-linen, till it hid her face.

“Yes, she is asleep,” he said gravely; “asleep, never to wake again. She

is dead.”

I turned aside my head in silence, for my thoughts, at that moment, were

not the thoughts which can be spoken by man to man.

“This has been a sad scene for any one at your age,” he resumed kindly,

as he left the bedside, “but you have borne it well. I am glad to see

that you can behave so calmly under so hard a trial.”

Calmly?

Yes! at that moment it was fit that I should be calm; for I could

remember that I had forgiven her.

VIII.

On the fourth day from the morning when she had died, I stood alone in

the churchyard by the grave of Margaret Sherwin.

It had been left for me to watch her dying moments; it was left for me

to bestow on her remains the last human charity which the living can

extend to the dead. If I could have looked into the future on our fatal

marriage-day, and could have known that the only home of my giving which

she would ever inhabit, would be the home of the grave!--

Her father had written me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and

which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these pages.

Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave the action

by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me and upon my

family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and disgust of

his wife’s surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some pecuniary

reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had declared he would

accuse her, of having been the real cause of her mother’s death; and

that he took care to give the appearance of sincerity to the indignation

which he professed to feel against her, by refusing to follow her

remains to the place of burial.

Ralph had returned to London, as soon as he received the letter from Mr.

Bernard which I had forwarded to him. He offered me his assistance

in performing the last duties left to my care, with an affectionate

earnestness that I had never seen him display towards me before. But Mr.

Bernard had generously undertaken to relieve me of every responsibility

which could be assumed by others; and on this occasion, therefore, I had

no need to put my brother’s ready kindness in helping me to the test.

I stood alone by the grave. Mr. Bernard had taken leave of me; the

workers and the idlers in the churchyard had alike departed. There was

no reason why I should not follow them; and yet I remained, with my eyes

fixed upon the freshly-turned earth at my feet, thinking of the dead.

Some time had passed thus, when the sound of approaching footsteps

attracted my attention. I looked up, and saw a man, clothed in a long

cloak drawn loosely around his neck, and wearing a shade over his eyes,

which hid the whole upper part of his face, advancing slowly towards me,

walking with the help of a stick. He came on straight to the grave, and

stopped at the foot of it--stopped opposite me, as I stood at the head.

“Do you know me again?” he said. “Do you know me for Robert Mannion?” As

he pronounced his name, he raised the shade and looked at me.

The first sight of that appalling face, with its ghastly discolouration

of sickness, its hideous deformity of feature, its fierce and changeless

malignity of expression glaring full on me in the piercing noonday

sunshine--glaring with the same unearthly look of fury and triumph which

I had seen flashing through the flashing lightning, when I parted from

him on the night of the storm--struck me speechless where I stood, and

has never left me since. I must not, I dare not, describe that frightful

sight; though it now rises before my imagination, vivid in its horror

as on the first day when I saw it--though it moves hither and thither

before me fearfully, while I write; though it lowers at my window,

a noisome shadow on the radiant prospect of earth, and sea, and sky,

whenever I look up from the page I am now writing towards the beauties

of my cottage view.

“Do you know me for Robert Mannion?” he repeated. “Do you know the

work of your own hands, now you see it? Or, am I changed to you past

recognition, as _your_ father might have found _my_ father changed,

if he had seen him on the morning of his execution, standing under the

gallows, with the cap over his face?”

Still I could neither speak nor move. I could only look away from him in

horror, and fix my eyes on the ground.

He lowered the shade to its former position on his face, then spoke

again.

“Under this earth that we stand on,” he said, setting his foot on the

grave; “down here, where you are now looking, lies buried with the

buried dead, the last influence which might one day have gained you

respite and mercy at my hands. Did you think of the one, last chance

that you were losing, when you came to see her die? I watched _you,_ and

I watched _her._ I heard as much as you heard; I saw as much as you saw;

I know when she died, and how, as you know it; I shared her last moments

with you, to the very end. It was my fancy not to give her up, as your

sole possession, even on her death-bed: it is my fancy, now, not to let

you stand alone--as if her corpse was your property--over her grave!”

While he uttered the last words, I felt my self-possession returning.

I could not force myself to speak, as I would fain have spoken--I could

only move away, to leave him.

“Stop,” he said, “what I have still to say concerns you. I have to tell

you, face to face, standing with you here, over her dead body, that

what I wrote from the hospital, is what I will do; that I will make your

whole life to come, one long expiation of this deformity;” (he pointed

to his face), “and of that death” (he set his foot once more on the

grave). “Go where you will, this face of mine shall never be turned away

from you; this tongue, which you can never silence but by a crime,

shall awaken against you the sleeping superstitions and cruelties of all

mankind. The noisome secret of that night when you followed us, shall

reek up like a pestilence in the nostrils of your fellow-beings, be

they whom they may. You may shield yourself behind your family and your

friends--I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest

of them! Now you have heard me, go! The next time we meet, you shall

acknowledge with your own lips that I can act as I speak. Live the free

life which Margaret Sherwin has restored to you by her death--you will

know it soon for the life of Cain!”

He turned from the grave, and left me by the way that he had come;

but the hideous image of him, and the remembrance of the words he had

spoken, never left me. Never for a moment, while I lingered alone in

the churchyard; never, when I quitted it, and walked through the crowded

streets. The horror of the fiend-face was still before my eyes, the

poison of the fiend-words was still in my ears, when I returned to my

lodging, and found Ralph waiting to see me as soon as I entered my room.

“At last you have come back!” he said; “I was determined to stop till

you did, if I stayed all day. Is anything the matter? Have you got into

some worse difficulty than ever?”

“No, Ralph--no. What have you to tell me?”

“Something that will rather surprise you, Basil: I have to tell you to

leave London at once! Leave it for your own interests and for everybody

else’s. My father has found out that Clara has been to see you.”

“Good heavens! how?”

“He won’t tell me. But he has found it out. You know how you stand in

his opinion--I leave you to imagine what he thinks of Clara’s conduct in

coming here.”

“No! no! tell me yourself, Ralph--tell me how she bears his

displeasure!”

“As badly as possible. After having forbidden her ever to enter this

house again, he now only shows how he is offended, by his silence; and

it is exactly that, of course, which distresses her. Between her notions

of implicit obedience to _him,_ and her opposite notions, just as

strong, of her sisterly duties to _you,_ she is made miserable from

morning to night. What she will end in, if things go on like this, I am

really afraid to think; and I’m not easily frightened, as you know.

Now, Basil, listen to me: it is _your_ business to stop this, and _my_

business to tell you how.”

“I will do anything you wish--anything for Clara’s sake!”

“Then leave London; and so cut short the struggle between her duty and

her inclination. If you don’t, my father is quite capable of taking her

at once into the country, though I know he has important business to

keep him in London. Write a letter to her, saying that you have gone

away for your health, for change of scene and peace of mind--gone away,

in short, to come back better some day. Don’t say where you’re going,

and don’t tell me, for she is sure to ask, and sure to get it out of

me if I know. Then she might be writing to you, and that might be found

out, too. She can’t distress herself about your absence, if you

account for it properly, as she distresses herself now--that is one

consideration. And you will serve your own interests, as well as

Clara’s, by going away--that is another.”

“Never mind _my_ interests. Clara! I can only think of Clara!”

“But you _have_ interests, and you must think of them. I told my father

of the death of that unhappy woman, and of your noble behaviour when she

was dying. Don’t interrupt me, Basil--it _was_ noble; I couldn’t have

done what you did, I can tell you! I saw he was more struck by it than

he was willing to confess. An impression has been made on him by the

turn circumstances have taken. Only leave that impression to strengthen,

and you’re safe. But if you destroy it by staying here, after what has

happened, and keeping Clara in this new dilemma--my dear fellow,

you destroy your best chance! There is a sort of defiance of him in

stopping; there is a downright concession to him in going away.”

“I _will_ go, Ralph; you have more than convinced me that I ought! I

will go to-morrow, though where--”

“You have the rest of the day to think where. _I_ should go abroad and

amuse myself; but your ideas of amusement are, most likely, not mine. At

any rate, wherever you go, I can always supply you with money, when you

want it; you can write to me, after you have been away some little time,

and I can write back, as soon as I have good news to tell you. Only

stick to your present determination, Basil, and, I’ll answer for it,

you will be back in your own study at home, before you are many months

older!”

“I will put it out of my power to fail in my resolution, by writing to

Clara at once, and giving you the letter to place in her hands to-morrow

evening, when I shall have left London some hours.”

“That’s right, Basil! that’s acting and speaking like a man!”

I wrote immediately, accounting for my sudden absence as Ralph had

advised me--wrote, with a heavy heart, all that I thought would be most

reassuring and cheering to Clara; and then, without allowing myself time

to hesitate or to think, gave the letter to my brother.

“She shall have it to-morrow night,” he said, “and my father shall know

why you have left town, at the same time. Depend on me in this, as in

everything else. And now, Basil, I must say good bye--unless you’re in

the humour for coming to look at my new house this evening. Ah! I see

that won’t suit you just now, so, good bye, old fellow! Write when you

are in any necessity--get back your spirits and your health--and never

doubt that the step you are now taking will be the best for Clara, and

the best for yourself!”

He hurried out of the room, evidently feeling more at saying farewell

than he was willing to let me discover. I was left alone for the rest of

the day, to think whither I should turn my steps on the morrow.

I knew that it would be best that I should leave England; but there

seemed to have grown within me, suddenly, a yearning towards my own

country that I had never felt before--a home-sickness for the land in

which my sister lived. Not once did my thoughts wander away to foreign

places, while I now tried to consider calmly in what direction I should

depart when I left London.

While I was still in doubt, my earliest impressions of childhood came

back to my memory; and influenced by them, I thought of Cornwall. My

nurse had been a Cornish woman; my first fancies and first feelings of

curiosity had been excited by her Cornish stories, by the descriptions

of the scenery, the customs, and the people of her native land, with

which she was ever ready to amuse me. As I grew older, it had always

been one of my favourite projects to go to Cornwall, to explore the wild

western land, on foot, from hill to hill throughout. And now, when no

motive of pleasure could influence my choice--now, when I was going

forth homeless and alone, in uncertainty, in grief, in peril--the old

fancy of long-past days still kept its influence, and pointed out my new

path to me among the rocky boundaries of the Cornish shore.

My last night in London was a night made terrible by Mannion’s fearful

image in all my dreams--made mournful, in my waking moments, by thoughts

of the morrow which was to separate me from Clara. But I never faltered

in my resolution to leave London for her sake. When the morning came,

I collected my few necessaries, added to them one or two books, and was

ready to depart.

My way through the streets took me near my father’s house. As I passed

by the well-remembered neighbourhood, my self-control so far deserted

me, that I stopped and turned aside into the Square, in the hope of

seeing Clara once more before I went away. Cautiously and doubtfully,

as if I was a trespasser even on the public pavement, I looked up at

the house which was no more my home--at the windows, side by side, of my

sister’s sitting-room and bed-room. She was neither standing near them,

nor passing accidentally from one room to another at that moment. Still

I could not persuade myself to go on. I thought of many and many an

act of kindness that she had done for me, which I seemed never to have

appreciated until now--I thought of what she had suffered, and might yet

suffer, for my sake--and the longing to see her once more, though only

for an instant, still kept me lingering near the house and looking up

vainly at the lonely windows.

It was a bright, cool, autumnal morning; perhaps she might have gone out

into the garden of the square: it used often to be her habit, when I was

at home, to go there and read at this hour. I walked round, outside the

railings, searching for her between gaps in the foliage; and had nearly

made the circuit of the garden thus, before the figure of a lady sitting

alone under one of the trees, attracted my attention. I stopped--looked

intently towards her--and saw that it was Clara.

Her face was almost entirely turned from me; but I knew her by her

dress, by her figure--even by her position, simple as it was. She was

sitting with her hands on a closed book which rested on her knee. A

little spaniel that I had given her lay asleep at her feet: she seemed

to be looking down at the animal, as far as I could tell by the position

of her head. When I moved aside, to try if I could see her face, the

trees hid her from sight. I was obliged to be satisfied with the little

I could discern of her, through the one gap in the foliage which gave

me a clear view of the place where she was sitting. To speak to her, to

risk the misery to both of us of saying farewell, was more than I dared

trust myself to do. I could only stand silent, and look at her--it might

be for the last time!--until the tears gathered in my eyes, so that I

could see nothing more. I resisted the temptation to dash them away.

While they still hid her from me--while I could not see her again, if I

would--I turned from the garden view, and left the Square.

Amid all the thoughts which thronged on me, as I walked farther and

farther away from the neighbourhood of what was once my home; amid all

the remembrances of past events--from the first day when I met Margaret

Sherwin to the day when I stood by her grave--which were recalled by the

mere act of leaving London, there now arose in my mind, for the first

time, a doubt, which from that day to this has never left it; a doubt

whether Mannion might not be tracking me in secret along every step of

my way.

I stopped instinctively, and looked behind me. Many figures were moving

in the distance; but the figure that I had seen in the churchyard was

nowhere visible among them. A little further on, I looked back again,

and still with the same result. After this, I let a longer interval

elapse before I stopped; and then, for the third time, I turned round,

and scanned the busy street-scene behind me, with eager, suspicious

eyes. Some little distance back, on the opposite side of the way, I

caught sight of a man who was standing still (as I was standing), amid

the moving throng. His height was like Mannion’s height; and he wore

a cloak like the cloak I had seen on Mannion, when he approached me at

Margaret’s grave. More than this I could not detect, without crossing

over. The passing vehicles and foot-passengers constantly intercepted my

view, from the position in which I stood.

Was this figure, thus visible only by intervals, the figure of Mannion?

and was he really tracking my steps? As the suspicion strengthened in

my mind that it was so, the remembrance of his threat in the churchyard:

“You may shield yourself behind your family and your friends: I will

strike at you through the dearest and the bravest of them--” suddenly

recurred to me; and brought with it a thought which urged me instantly

to proceed on my way. I never looked behind me again, as I now walked

on; for I said within myself:--“If he is following me, I must not, and

will not avoid him: it will be the best result of my departure, that I

shall draw after me that destroying presence; and thus at least remove

it far and safely away from my family and my home!”

So, I neither turned aside from the straight direction, nor hurried my

steps, nor looked back any more. At the time I had resolved on, I left

London for Cornwall, without making any attempt to conceal my departure.

And though I knew that he must surely be following me, still I never saw

him again: never discovered how close or how far off he was on my track.

*****

Two months have passed since that period; and I know no more about him

_now_ than I knew _then._

JOURNAL.

October 19th--My retrospect is finished. I have traced the history of

my errors and misfortunes, of the wrong I have done and the punishment I

have suffered for it, from the past to the present time.

The pages of my manuscript (many more than I thought to write at first)

lie piled together on the table before me. I dare not look them over: I

dare not read the lines which my own hand has traced. There may be much

in my manner of writing that wants alteration; but I have no heart to

return to my task, and revise and reconsider as I might if I were intent

on producing a book which was to be published during my lifetime. Others

will be found, when I am no more, to carve, and smooth, and polish to

the popular taste of the day this rugged material of Truth which I shall

leave behind me.

But now, while I collect these leaves, and seal them up, never to be

opened again by my hands, can I feel that I have related all which it is

necessary to tell? No! While Mannion lives--while I am ignorant of

the changes that may yet be wrought in the home from which I am

exiled--there remains for me a future which must be recorded, as the

necessary sequel to the narrative of the past. What may yet happen

worthy of record, I know not: what sufferings I may yet undergo, which

may unfit me for continuing the labour now terminated for a time, I

cannot foresee. I have not hope enough in the future, or in myself; to

believe that I shall have the time or the energy to write hereafter,

as I have written already, from recollection. It is best, then, that I

should note down events daily as they occur; and so ensure, as far as

may be, a continuation of my narrative, fragment by fragment, to the

very last.

But, first, as a fit beginning to the Journal I now propose to keep,

let me briefly reveal something, in this place, of the life that I am

leading in my retirement on the Cornish coast.

The fishing hamlet in which I have written the preceding pages, is on

the southern shore of Cornwall, not more than a few miles distant from

the Land’s End. The cottage I inhabit is built of rough granite, rudely

thatched, and has but two rooms. I possess no furniture but my bed, my

table, and my chair; and some half-dozen fishermen and their families

are my only neighbours. But I feel neither the want of luxuries, nor

the want of society: all that I wished for in coming here, I have--the

completest seclusion.

My arrival produced, at first, both astonishment and suspicion. The

fishermen of Cornwall still preserve almost all the superstitions,

even to the grossest, which were held dear by their humble ancestors,

centuries back. My simple neighbours could not understand why I had no

business to occupy me; could not reconcile my worn, melancholy face with

my youthful years. Such loneliness as mine looked unnatural--especially

to the women. They questioned me curiously; and the very simplicity of

my answer, that I had only come to Cornwall to live in quiet, and regain

my health, perplexed them afresh. They waited, day after day, when I

was first installed in the cottage, to see letters sent to me--and no

letters arrived: to see my friends join me--and no friends came. This

deepened the mystery to their eyes. They began to recall to memory old

Cornish legends of solitary, secret people who had lived, years and

years ago, in certain parts of the county--coming, none knew whence;

existing, none knew by what means; dying and disappearing, none knew

when. They felt half inclined to identify me with these mysterious

visitors--to consider me as some being, a stranger to the whole human

family, who had come to waste away under a curse, and die ominously and

secretly among them. Even the person to whom I first paid money for

my necessaries, questioned, for a moment, the lawfulness and safety of

receiving it!

But these doubts gradually died away; this superstitious curiosity

insensibly wore off, among my poor neighbours. They became used to my

solitary, thoughtful, and (to them) inexplicable mode of existence.

One or two little services of kindness which I rendered, soon after my

arrival, to their children, worked wonders in my favour; and I am

pitied now, rather than distrusted. When the results of the fishing are

abundant, a little present has been often made to me, out of the nets.

Some weeks ago, after I had gone out in the morning, I found on my

return, two or three gulls’ eggs placed in a basket before my door.

They had been left there by the children, as ornaments for my cottage

window--the only ornaments they had to give; the only ornaments they had

ever heard of.

I can now go out unnoticed, directing my steps up the ravine in which

our hamlet is situated, towards the old grey stone church which stands

solitary on the hill-top, surrounded by the lonesome moor. If any

children happen to be playing among the scattered tombs, they do not

start and run away, when they see me sitting on the coffin stone at the

entrance of the churchyard, or wandering round the sturdy granite

tower, reared by hands which have mouldered into dust centuries ago. My

approach has ceased to be of evil omen for my little neighbours. They

just look up at me, for a moment, with bright smiles, and then go on

with their game.

From the churchyard, I look down the ravine, on fine days, towards the

sea. Mighty piles of granite soar above the fishermen’s cottages on each

side; the little strip of white beach which the cliffs shut in, glows

pure in the sunlight; the inland stream that trickles down the bed of

the rocks, sparkles, at places, like a rivulet of silver-fire; the round

white clouds, with their violet shadows and bright wavy edges, roll on

majestically above me; the cries of the sea-birds, the endless, dirging

murmur of the surf, and the far music of the wind among the ocean

caverns, fall, now together, now separately on my ear. Nature’s

voice and Nature’s beauty--God’s soothing and purifying angels of the

soul--speak to me most tenderly and most happily, at such times as

these.

It is when the rain falls, and wind and sea arise together--when,

sheltered among the caverns in the side of the precipice, I look out

upon the dreary waves and the leaping spray--that I feel the unknown

dangers which hang over my head in all the horror of their uncertainty.

Then, the threats of my deadly enemy strengthen their hold fearfully on

all my senses. I see the dim and ghastly personification of a fatality

that is lying in wait for me, in the strange shapes of the mist which

shrouds the sky, and moves, and whirls, and brightens, and darkens in a

weird glory of its own over the heaving waters. Then, the crash of the

breakers on the reef howls upon me with a sound of judgment; and the

voice of the wind, growling and battling behind me in the hollows of the

cave, is, ever and ever, the same thunder-voice of doom and warning in

my ear.

Does this foreboding that Mannion’s eye is always on me, that his

footsteps are always secretly following mine, proceed only from the

weakness of my worn-out energies? Could others in my situation restrain

themselves from fearing, as I do, that he is still incessantly watching

me in secret? It is possible. It may be, that his terrible connection

with all my sufferings of the past, makes me attach credit too easily to

the destroying power which he arrogates to himself in the future. Or

it may be, that all resolution to resist him is paralysed in me, not so

much by my fear of his appearance, as by my uncertainty of the time when

it will take place--not so much by his menaces themselves, as by the

delay in their execution. Still, though I can estimate fairly the value

of these considerations, they exercise over me no lasting influence of

tranquillity. I remember what this man _has_ done; and in spite of

all reasoning, I believe in what he has told me he will yet do. Madman

though he may be, I have no hope of defence or escape from him in any

direction, look where I will.

But for the occupation which the foregoing narrative has given to my

mind; but for the relief which my heart can derive from its thoughts of

Clara, I must have sunk under the torment of suspense and suspicion

in which my life is now passed. My sister! Even in this self-imposed

absence from her, I have still found a means of connecting myself

remotely with something that she loves. I have taken, as the assumed

name under which I live, and shall continue to live until my father has

given me back his confidence and his affection, the name of a little

estate that once belonged to my mother, and that now belongs to

her daughter. Even the most wretched have their caprice, their last

favourite fancy. I possess no memorial of Clara, not even a letter. The

name that I have taken from the place which she was always fondest and

proudest of, is, to me, what a lock of hair, a ring, any little loveable

keepsake, is to others happier than I am.

I have wandered away from the simple details of my life in this place.

Shall I now return to them? Not to-day; my head burns, my hand is weary.

If the morrow should bring with it no event to write of, on the morrow I

can resume the subject from which I now break off.

October 20th.--After laying aside my pen, I went out yesterday for

the purpose of renewing that former friendly intercourse with my poor

neighbours, which has been interrupted for the last three weeks by

unintermitting labour at the latter portions of my narrative.

In the course of my walk among the cottages and up to the old church

on the moor, I saw fewer of the people of the district than usual.

The behaviour of those whom I did chance to meet, seemed unaccountably

altered; perhaps it was mere fancy, but I thought they avoided me. One

woman abruptly shut her cottage door as I approached. A fisherman, when

I wished him good day, hardly answered; and walked on without stopping

to gossip with me as usual. Some children, too, whom I overtook on the

road to the church, ran away from me, making gestures to each other

which I could not understand. Is the first superstitious distrust of

me returning after I thought it had been entirely overcome? Or are my

neighbours only showing their resentment at my involuntary neglect of

them for the last three weeks? I must try to find out to-morrow.

21st--I have discovered all! The truth, which I was strangely slow to

suspect yesterday, has forced itself on me to-day.

I went out this morning, as I had purposed, to discover whether my

neighbours had really changed towards me, or not, since the interval

of my three weeks’ seclusion. At the cottage-door nearest to mine, two

young children were playing, whom I knew I had succeeded in attaching

to me soon after my arrival. I walked up to speak to them; but, as I

approached, their mother came out, and snatched them from me with a

look of anger and alarm. Before I could question her, she had taken them

inside the cottage, and had closed the door.

Almost at the same moment, as if by a preconcerted signal, three or four

other women came out from their abodes at a little distance, warned

me in loud, angry voices not to come near them, or their children; and

disappeared, shutting their doors. Still not suspecting the truth, I

turned back, and walked towards the beach. The lad whom I employ to

serve me with provisions, was lounging there against the side of an old

boat. At seeing me, he started up, and walked away a few steps--then

stopped, and called out--

“I’m not to bring you anything more; father says he won’t sell to you

again, whatever you pay him.”

I asked the boy why his father had said that; but he ran back towards

the village without answering me.

“You had best leave us,” muttered a voice behind me. “If you don’t go of

your own accord, our people will starve you out of the place.”

The man who said these words, had been one of the first to set the

example of friendliness towards me, after my arrival; and to him I now

turned for the explanation which no one else would give me.

“You know what we mean, and why we want you to go, well enough,” was his

reply.

I assured him that I did not; and begged him so earnestly to enlighten

me, that he stopped as he was walking away.

“I’ll tell you about it,” he said; “but not now; I don’t want to be seen

with you.” (As he spoke he looked back at the women, who were appearing

once more in front of their cottages.) “Go home again, and shut yourself

up; I’ll come at dusk.”

And he came as he had promised. But when I asked him to enter my

cottage, he declined, and said he would talk to me outside, at my

window. This disinclination to be under my roof, reminded me that my

supplies of food had, for the last week, been left on the window-ledge,

instead of being brought into my room as usual. I had been too

constantly occupied to pay much attention to the circumstance at the

time; but I thought it very strange now.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t suspect why we want to get you out of

our place here?” said the man, looking in distrustfully at me through

the window.

I repeated that I could not imagine why they had all changed towards me,

or what wrong they thought I had done them.

“Then I’ll soon let you know it,” he continued. “We want you gone from

here, because--”

“Because,” interrupted another voice behind him, which I recognised

as his wife’s, “because you’re bringing a blight on us, and our

houses--because _we want our children’s faces left as God made them_--”

“Because,” interposed a second woman, who had joined her, “you’re

bringing devil’s vengeances among Christian people! Come back, John!

he’s not safe for a true man to speak to.”

They dragged the fisherman away with them before he could say another

word. I had heard enough. The fatal truth burst at once on my mind.

Mannion _had_ followed me to Cornwall: his threats were executed to the

very letter!

(10 o’clock.)--I have lit my candle for the last time in this cottage,

to add a few lines to my journal. The hamlet is quiet; I hear no

footstep outside--and yet, can I be certain that Mannion is not lurking

near my door at this moment?

I must go when the morning comes; I must leave this quiet retreat, in

which I have lived so calmly until now. There is no hope that I can

reinstate myself in the opinions of my poor neighbours. He has arrayed

against me the pitiless hostility of their superstition. He has found

out the dormant cruelties, even in the hearts of these simple people;

and has awakened them against me, as he said he would. The evil work

must have been begun within the last three weeks, while I was much

within doors, and there was little chance of meeting me in my usual

walks. How that work was accomplished it is useless to inquire; my only

object now, must be to prepare myself at once for departure.

(11 o’clock.)--While I was putting up my few books, a minute ago, a

little embroidered marker fell out of one of them, which I had not

observed in the pages before; and which I recognised as having been

worked for me by Clara. I have a memorial of my sister in my possession,

after all! Trifling as it is, I shall preserve it about me, as a

messenger of consolation in the time of adversity and peril.

(1 o’clock.)--The wind sweeps down on us, from off the moorland, in

fiercer and fiercer gusts; the waves dash heavily against our rock

promontory; the rain drifts wildly past my windows; and the densest

darkness overspreads the whole sky. The storm which has been threatening

for some days, is gathering fast.

(Village of Treen, October 22nd.)--The events of this one day have

changed the whole future of my life. I must force myself to write of

them at once. Something warns me that if I delay, though only till

to-morrow, I shall be incapable of relating them at all.

It was still early in the morning--I think about seven o’clock--when I

closed my cottage door behind me, never to open it again. I met only one

or two of my neighbours as I left the hamlet. They drew aside to let me

advance, without saying a word. With a heavy heart, grieved more than

I could have imagined possible at departing as an enemy from among the

people with whom I had lived as a friend, I passed slowly by the last

cottages, and ascended the cliff path which led to the moor.

The storm had raged at its fiercest some hours back. Soon after daylight

the wind sank; but the majesty of the mighty sea had lost none of

its terror and grandeur as yet. The huge Atlantic waves still hurled

themselves, foaming and furious, against the massive granite of the

Cornish cliffs. Overhead, the sky was hidden in a thick white mist, now

hanging, still and dripping, down to the ground; now rolling in shapes

like vast smoke-wreaths before the light wind which still blew at

intervals. At a distance of more than a few yards, the largest objects

were totally invisible. I had nothing to guide me, as I advanced, but

the ceaseless roaring of the sea on my right hand.

It was my purpose to get to Penzance by night. Beyond that, I had no

project, no thought of what refuge I should seek next. Any hope I might

have formerly felt of escaping from Mannion, had now deserted me for

ever. I could not discover by any outward indications, that he was still

following my footsteps. The mist obscured all objects behind me from

view; the ceaseless crashing of the shore-waves overwhelmed all landward

sounds, but I never doubted for a moment that he was watching me, as I

proceeded along my onward way.

I walked slowly, keeping from the edge of the precipices only by keeping

the sound of the sea always at the same distance from my ear; knowing

that I was advancing in the proper direction, though very circuitously,

as long as I heard the waves on my right hand. To have ventured on the

shorter way, by the moor and the cross-roads beyond it, would have been

only to have lost myself past all chance of extrication, in the mist.

In this tedious manner I had gone on for some time, before it struck

me that the noise of the sea was altering completely to my sense

of hearing. It seemed to be sounding very strangely on each side of

me--both on my right hand and on my left. I stopped and strained my eyes

to look through the mist, but it was useless. Crags only a few yards

off, seemed like shadows in the thick white vapour. Again, I went on a

little; and, ere long, I heard rolling towards me, as it were, under

my own feet, and under the roaring of the sea, a howling, hollow,

intermittent sound--like thunder at a distance. I stopped again, and

rested against a rock. After some time, the mist began to part to

seaward, but remained still as thick as ever on each side of me. I went

on towards the lighter sky in front--the thunder-sound booming louder

and louder, in the very heart, as it seemed, of the great cliff.

The mist brightened yet a little more, and showed me a landmark to

ships, standing on the highest point of the surrounding rocks. I climbed

to it, recognised the glaring red and white pattern in which it was

painted, and knew that I had wandered, in the mist, away from the

regular line of coast, out on one of the great granite promontories

which project into the sea, as natural breakwaters, on the southern

shore of Cornwall.

I had twice penetrated as far as this place, at the earlier period of

my sojourn in the fishing-hamlet, and while I now listened to the

thunder-sound, I knew from what cause it proceeded.

Beyond the spot where I stood, the rocks descended suddenly, and almost

perpendicularly, to the range below them. In one of the highest parts of

the wall-side of granite thus formed, there opened a black, yawning hole

that slanted nearly straight downwards, like a tunnel, to unknown and

unfathomable depths below, into which the waves found entrance through

some subterranean channel. Even at calm times the sea was never silent

in this frightful abyss, but on stormy days its fury was terrific. The

wild waves boiled and thundered in their imprisonment, till they seemed

to convulse the solid cliff about them, like an earthquake. But, high

as they leapt up in the rocky walls of the chasm, they never leapt into

sight from above. Nothing but clouds of spray indicated to the eye, what

must be the horrible tumult of the raging waters below.

With my recognition of the place to which I had now wandered, came

remembrance of the dangers I had left behind me on the rock-track that

led from the mainland to the promontory--dangers of narrow ledges and

treacherous precipices, which I had passed safely, while unconscious

of them in the mist, but which I shrank from tempting again, now that I

recollected them, until the sky had cleared, and I could see my way well

before me. The atmosphere was still brightening slowly over the tossing,

distant waves: I determined to wait until it had lost all its obscurity,

before I ventured to retrace my steps.

I moved down towards the lower range of rocks, to seek a less exposed

position than that which I now occupied. As I neared the chasm, the

terrific howling of the waves inside it was violent enough to drown,

not only the crashing sound of the surf on the outward crags of the

promontory, but even the shrill cries of the hundreds on hundreds

of sea-birds that whirled around me, except when their flight was

immediately over my head. At each side of the abyss, the rocks, though

very precipitous, afforded firm hold for hand and foot. As I descended

them, the morbid longing to look on danger, which has led many a man

to the very brink of a precipice, even while he dreaded it, led me to

advance as near as I durst to the side of the great hole, and to gaze

down into it. I could see but little of its black, shining, interior

walls, or of the fragments of rock which here and there jutted out from

them, crowned with patches of long, lank, sea-weed waving slowly to

and fro in empty space--I could see but little of these things, for the

spray from the bellowing water in the invisible depths below, steamed up

almost incessantly, like smoke, and shot, hissing in clouds out of the

mouth of the chasm, on to a huge flat rock, covered with sea-weed, that

lay beneath and in front of it. The very sight of this smooth, slippery

plane of granite, shelving steeply downward, right into the gaping

depths of the hole, made my head swim; the thundering of the water

bewildered and deafened me--I moved away while I had the power: away,

some thirty or forty yards in a lateral direction, towards the edges of

the promontory which looked down on the sea. Here, the rocks rose again

in wild shapes, forming natural caverns and penthouses. Towards one of

these I now advanced, to shelter myself till the sky had cleared.

I had just entered the place, close to the edge of the cliff, when a

hand was laid suddenly and firmly on my arm; and, through the crashing

of the waves below, the thundering of the water in the abyss behind,

and the shrieking of the seabirds overhead, I heard these words, spoken

close to my ear:--

“Take care of your life. It is not your’s to throw away--it is _mine!_”

I turned, and saw Mannion standing by me. No shade concealed the hideous

distortion of his face. His eye was on me, as he pointed significantly

down to the surf foaming two hundred feet beneath us.

“Suicide!” he said slowly--“I suspected it, and, this time, I followed

close: followed, to fight with death, which should have you.”

As I moved back from the edge of the precipice, and shook him from me,

I marked the vacancy that glared even through the glaring triumph of his

eye, and remembered how I had been warned against him at the hospital.

The mist was thickening again, but thickening now in clouds that parted

and changed minute by minute, under the influence of the light behind

them. I had noticed these sudden transitions before, and knew them to be

the signs which preceded the speedy clearing of the atmosphere.

When I looked up at the sky, Mannion stepped back a few paces, and

pointed in the direction of the fishing-hamlet from which I had

departed.

“Even in that remote place,” he said, “and among those ignorant people,

my deformed face has borne witness against you, and Margaret’s death has

been avenged, as I said it should. You have been expelled as a pest and

a curse, by a community of poor fishermen; you have begun to live your

life of excommunication, as I lived mine. Superstition!--barbarous,

monstrous superstition, which I found ready made to my use, is the

scourge with which I have driven you from that hiding-place. Look at me

now! I have got back my strength; I am no longer the sick refuse of the

hospital. Where you go, I have the limbs and the endurance to go too! I

tell you again, we are linked together for life; I cannot leave you if

I would. The horrible joy of hunting you through the world, leaps in my

blood like fire! Look! look out on those tossing waves. There is no rest

for _them;_ there shall be no rest for _you!_”

The sight of him, standing close by me in that wild solitude; the hoarse

sound of his voice, as he raised it almost to raving in his exultation

over my helplessness; the incessant crashing of the sea on the outer

rocks; the roaring of the tortured waters imprisoned in the depths of

the abyss behind us; the obscurity of the mist, and the strange, wild

shapes it began to take, as it now rolled almost over our heads---all

that I saw, all that I heard, seemed suddenly to madden me, as Mannion

uttered his last words. My brain felt turned to fire; my heart to ice.

A horrible temptation to rid myself for ever of the wretch before me, by

hurling him over the precipice at my feet, seized on me. I felt my hands

stretching themselves out towards him without my willing it--if I

had waited another instant, I should have dashed him or myself to

destruction. But I turned back in time; and, reckless of all danger,

fled from the sight of him, over the rugged and perilous surface of the

cliff.

The shock of a fall among the rocks, before I had advanced more than a

few yards, partly restored my self-possession. Still, I dared not look

back to see if Mannion was following me, so long as the precipice behind

him was within view.

I began to climb to the higher range of rocks almost at the same spot

by which I had descended from them--judging by the close thunder of the

water in the chasm. Halfway up, I stopped at a broad resting-place; and

found that I must proceed a little, either to the right or to the left,

in a horizontal direction, before I could easily get higher. At that

moment, the mist was slowly brightening again. I looked first to the

left, to see where I could get good foothold--then to the right, towards

the outer sides of the riven rocks close at hand.

At the same instant, I caught sight dimly of the figure of Mannion,

moving shadow-like below and beyond me, skirting the farther edge of

the slippery plane of granite that shelved into the gaping mouth of the

hole. The brightening atmosphere showed him that he had risked himself,

in the mist, too near to a dangerous place. He stopped--looked up and

saw me watching him--raised his hand--and shook it threateningly in the

air. The ill-calculated violence of his action, in making that menacing

gesture, destroyed his equilibrium--he staggered--tried to recover

himself--swayed half round where he stood--then fell heavily backward,

right on to the steep shelving rock.

The wet sea-weed slipped through his fingers, as they madly clutched at

it. He struggled frantically to throw himself towards the side of the

declivity; slipping further and further down it at every effort. Close

to the mouth of the abyss, he sprang up as if he had been shot. A

tremendous jet of spray hissed out upon him at the same moment. I heard

a scream, so shrill, so horribly unlike any human cry, that it seemed

to silence the very thundering of the water. The spray fell. For one

instant, I saw two livid and bloody hands tossed up against the black

walls of the hole, as he dropped into it. Then, the waves roared again

fiercely in their hidden depths; the spray flew out once more; and

when it cleared off; nothing was to be seen at the yawning mouth of the

chasm--nothing moved over the shelving granite, but some torn particles

of sea-weed sliding slowly downwards in the running ooze.

The shock of that sight must have paralysed within me the power of

remembering what followed it; for I can recall nothing, after looking

on the emptiness of the rock below, except that I crouched on the ledge

under my feet, to save myself from falling off it--that there was an

interval of oblivion--and that I seemed to awaken again, as it were, to

the thundering of the water in the abyss. When I rose and looked around

me, the seaward sky was lovely in its clearness; the foam of the leaping

waves flashed gloriously in the sunlight: and all that remained of the

mist was one great cloud of purple shadow, hanging afar off over the

whole inland view.

I traced my way back along the promontory feebly and slowly. My weakness

was so great, that I trembled in every limb. A strange uncertainty about

directing myself in the simplest actions, overcame my mind. Sometimes, I

stopped short, hesitating in spite of myself at the slightest obstacles

in my path. Sometimes, I grew confused without any cause, about the

direction in which I was proceeding, and fancied I was going back to the

fishing village.. The sight that I had witnessed, seemed to be affecting

me physically, far more than mentally. As I dragged myself on my weary

way along the coast, there was always the same painful vacancy in

my thoughts: there seemed to be no power in them yet, of realising

Mannion’s appalling death.

By the time I arrived at this village, my strength was so utterly

exhausted, that the people at the inn were obliged to help me upstairs.

Even now, after some hours’ rest, the mere exertion of dipping my pen

in the ink begins to be a labour and a pain to me. There is a strange

fluttering at my heart; my recollections are growing confused again--I

can write no more.

23rd.--The frightful scene that I witnessed yesterday still holds the

same disastrous influence over me. I have vainly endeavoured to think,

not of Mannion’s death, but of the free prospect which that death has

opened to my view. Waking or sleeping, it is as if some fatality kept

all my faculties imprisoned within the black walls of the chasm. I saw

the livid, bleeding hands flying past them again, in my dreams, last

night. And now, while the morning is clear and the breeze is fresh, no

repose, no change comes to my thoughts. Time bright beauty of unclouded

daylight seems to have lost the happy influence over me which it used

formerly to possess.

25th.--All yesterday I had not energy enough even to add a line to this

journal. The strength to control myself seems to have gone from me.

The slightest accidental noise in the house, throws me into a fit of

trembling which I cannot subdue. Surely, if ever the death of one human

being brought release and salvation to another, the death of Mannion has

brought them to me; and yet, the effect left on my mind by the horror of

having seen it, is still not lessened--not even by the knowledge of all

that I have gained by being freed from the deadliest and most determined

enemy that man ever had.

26th.--Visions--half waking, half dreaming--all through the night.

Visions of my last lonely evening in the fishing-hamlet--of Mannion

again--the livid hands whirling to and fro over my head in the

darkness--then, glimpses of home; of Clara reading to me in my

study--then, a change to the room where Margaret died--the sight of her

again, with her long black hair streaming over her face--then, oblivion

for a little while--then, Mannion once more; walking backwards and

forwards by my bedside--his death, seeming like a dream; his watching

me through the night like a reality to which I had just awakened--Clara

walking opposite to him on the other side--Ralph between them, pointing

at me.

27th.--I am afraid my mind is seriously affected; it must have been

fatally weakened before I passed through the terrible scenes among the

rocks of the promontory. My nerves must have suffered far more than I

suspected at the time, under the constant suspense in which I have been

living since I left London, and under the incessant strain and agitation

of writing the narrative of all that has happened to me. Shall I send

a letter to Ralph? No--not yet. It might look like impatience, like not

being able to bear my necessary absence as calmly and resolutely as I

ought.

28th.--A wakeful night--tormented by morbid apprehensions that the

reports about me in the fishing-village may spread to this place; that

inquiries may be made after Mannion; and that I may be suspected of

having caused his death.

29th.--The people at the inn have sent to get me medical advice. The

doctor came to-day. He was kindness itself; but I fell into a fit of

trembling, the moment he entered the room--grew confused in attempting

to tell him what was the matter with me--and, at last, could not

articulate a single word distinctly. He looked very grave as he examined

me and questioned the landlady. I thought I heard him say something

about sending for my friends, but could not be certain.

31st.--Weaker and weaker. I tried in despair, to-day, to write to Ralph;

but knew not how to word the letter. The simplest forms of expression

confused themselves inextricably in my mind. I was obliged to give it

up. It is a surprise to me to find that I can still add with my pencil

to the entries in this Journal! When I am no longer able to continue,

in some sort, the employment to which I have been used for so many weeks

past, what will become of me? Shall I have lost the only safeguard that

keeps me in my senses?

* * * * *

Worse! worse! I have forgotten what day of the month it is; and cannot

remember it for a moment together, when they tell me--cannot even

recollect how long I have been confined to my bed. I feel as if my heart

was wasting away. Oh! if I could only see Clara again.

* * * * *

The doctor and a strange man have been looking among my papers.

My God! am I dying? dying at the very time when there is a chance of

happiness for my future life?

* * * * *

Clara!--far from her--nothing but the little book-marker she worked for

me--leave it round my neck when I--

I can’t move, or breathe, or think--if I could only be taken back--if

my father could see me as I am now! Night again--the dreams that will

come--always of home; sometimes, the untried home in heaven, as well as

the familiar home on earth--

* * * * *

Clara! I shall die out of my senses, unless Clara--break the news

gently--it may kill her--

Her face so bright and calm! her watchful, weeping eyes always looking

at me, with a light in them that shines steady through the quivering

tears. While the light lasts, I shall live; when it begins to die out--*

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

* There are some lines of writing beyond this point; but they are

illegible.

LETTERS IN CONCLUSION.

LETTER I.

FROM WILLIAM PENHALE, MINER, AT BARTALLOCK, IN CORNWALL, TO HIS WIFE IN

LONDON.

MY DEAR MARY,

I received your letter yesterday, and was more glad than I can say, at

hearing that our darling girl Susan has got such a good place in London,

and likes her new mistress so well. My kind respects to your sister and

her husband, and say I don’t grumble about the money that’s been spent

in sending you with Susan to take care of her. She was too young, poor

child, to be trusted to make the journey alone; and, as I was obliged to

stop at home and work to keep the other children, and pay back what we

borrowed for the trip, of course you were the proper person, after me,

to go with Susan--whose welfare is a more precious possession to us than

any money, I am sure. Besides, when I married you, and took you away

to Cornwall, I always promised you a trip to London to see your friends

again; and now that promise is performed. So, once again, don’t fret

about the money that’s been spent: I shall soon pay it back.

I’ve got some very strange news for you, Mary. You know how bad work

was getting at the mine, before you went away--so bad, that I thought

to myself after you had gone, “Hadn’t I better try what I can do in the

fishing at Treen?” And I went there; and, thank God, have got on well

by it. I can turn my hand to most things; and the fishing has been very

good this year. So I have stuck to my work. And now I come to my news.

The landlady at the inn here, is, as you know, a sort of relation of

mine. Well, the third afternoon after you had gone, I was stopping to

say a word to her at her own door, on my way to the beach, when we saw a

young gentleman, quite a stranger, coming up to us. He looked very pale

and wild-like, I thought, when he asked for a bed; and then got faint

all of a sudden--so faint and ill, that I was obliged to lend a hand in

getting him upstairs. The next morning I heard he was worse: and it was

just the same story the morning after. He quite frightened the landlady,

he was so restless, and talked to himself in such a strange way;

specially at night. He wouldn’t say what was the matter with him, or

who he was: we could only find out that he had been stopping among the

fishing people further west: and that they had not behaved very well to

him at last--more shame for them! I’m sure they could take no hurt from

the poor young fellow, let him be whom he may. Well, the end of it was

that I went and fetched the doctor for him myself, and when we got into

his room, we found him all pale and trembling, and looking at us, poor

soul, as if he thought we meant to murder him. The doctor gave his

complaint some hard names which I don’t know how to write down; but it

seems there’s more the matter with his mind than his body, and that

he must have had some great fright which has shaken his nerves all to

pieces. The only way to do him good, as the doctor said, was to have him

carefully nursed by his relations, and kept quiet among people he knew;

strange faces about him being likely to make him worse. The doctor asked

where his friends lived; but he wouldn’t say, and, lately, he’s got so

much worse that he can’t speak clearly to us at all.

Yesterday evening, he gave us all a fright. The doctor hearing me below,

asking after him, said I was to come up stairs and help to move him to

have his bed made. As soon as I raised him up (though I’m sure I touched

him as gently as I could), he fainted dead away. While he was being

brought to, a little piece of something that looked like card-board,

prettily embroidered with beads and silk, came away from a string that

held it round his neck, and dropped off the bedside. I picked it up;

for I remembered the time, Mary, when you and I were courting, and how

precious the least thing was to me that belonged to you. So I took care

of it for him, thinking it might be a keepsake from his sweetheart.

And sure enough, when he came to, he put up his thin white hands to his

neck, and looked so thankful at me when I tied the little thing again to

the string! Just as I had done that, the doctor beckons me to the other

end of the room.

“This won’t do,” says he to me in a whisper. “If he goes on like this,

he’ll lose his reason, if not his life. I must search his papers, to

find out what friends he has; and you must be my witness.”

So the doctor opens his little bag, and takes out a square sealed packet

first; then two or three letters tied together; the poor soul looking

all the while as if he longed to prevent us from touching them. Well,

the doctor said there was no occasion to open the packet, for the

direction was the same on all the letters, and the name corresponded

with his initials marked on his linen.

“I’m next to certain this is where he lives, or did live; so this is

where I’ll write,” says the doctor.

“Shall my wife take the letter, Sir?” says I. “She’s in London with our

girl, Susan; and, if his friends should be gone away from where you are

writing to, she may be able to trace them.”

“Quite right, Penhale!” says he; “we’ll do that. Write to your wife, and

put my letter inside yours.”

I did as he told me, at once; and his letter is inside this, with the

direction of the house and the street.

Now, Mary, dear, go at once, and see what you can find out. The

direction on the doctor’s letter may be his home; and if it isn’t, there

may be people there who can tell you where it is. So go at once, and

let us know directly what luck you have had, for there is no time to be

lost; and if you saw the young gentleman, you would pity him as much as

we do.

This has got to be such a long letter, that I have no room left to write

any more. God bless you, Mary, and God bless my darling Susan! Give her

a kiss for father’s sake, and believe me, Your loving husband,

WILLIAM PENHALE.

*****

LETTER II.

FROM MARY PENHALE TO HER HUSBAND

DEAREST WILLIAM,

Susan sends a hundred kisses, and best loves to you and her brothers and

sisters. She’s getting on nicely; and her mistress is as kind and fond

of her as can be. Best respects, too, from my sister Martha, and her

husband. And now I’ve done giving you all my messages, I’ll tell you

some good news for the poor young gentleman who is so bad at Treen.

As soon as I had seen Susan, and read your letter to her, I went to

the place where the doctor’s letter directed me. Such a grand house,

William! I was really afraid to knock at the door. So I plucked up

courage, and gave a pull at the bell; and a very fat, big man, with his

head all plastered over with powder, opened the door, almost before I

had done ringing. “If you please, Sir,” says I, showing him the name on

the doctor’s letter, “do any friends of this gentleman live here?” “To

be sure they do,” says he; “his father and sister live here: but what do

you want to know for?” “I want them to read this letter,” says I. “It’s

to tell them that the young gentleman is very bad in health down in our

country.” “You can’t see my master,” says he, “for he’s confined to his

bed by illness: and Miss Clara is very poorly too--you had better leave

the letter with me.” Just as he said this, an elderly lady crossed the

hall (I found out she was the housekeeper, afterwards), and asked what

I wanted. When I told her, she looked quite startled. “Step this way,

ma’am,” says she; “you will do Miss Clara more good than all the doctors

put together. But you must break the news to her carefully, before she

sees the letter. Please to make it out better news than it is, for

the young lady is in very delicate health.” We went upstairs--such

stair-carpets! I was almost frightened to step on them, after walking

through the dirty streets. The housekeeper opened a door, and said a few

words inside, which I could not hear, and then let me in where the young

lady was.

Oh, William! she had the sweetest, kindest face I ever saw in my life.

But it was so pale, and there was such a sad look in her eyes when she

asked me to sit down, that it went to my heart, when I thought of the

news I had to tell her. I couldn’t speak just at first; and I suppose

she thought I was in some trouble--for she begged me not to tell her

what I wanted, till I was better. She said it with such a voice and

such a look, that, like a great fool, I burst out crying, instead of

answering as I ought. But it did me good, though, and made me able to

tell her about her brother (breaking it as gently as I could) before I

gave her the doctor’s letter. She never opened it; but stood up before

me as if she was turned to stone--not able to cry, or speak, or move. It

frightened me so, to see her in such a dreadful state, that I forgot all

about the grand house, and the difference there was between us; and took

her in my arms, making her sit down on the sofa by me--just as I should

do, if I was consoling our own Susan under some great trouble. Well!

I soon made her look more like herself, comforting her in every way I

could think of: and she laid her poor head on my shoulder, and I took

and kissed her, (not remembering a bit about its being a born lady and

a stranger that I was kissing); and the tears came at last, and did her

good. As soon as she could speak, she thanked God her brother was found,

and had fallen into kind hands. She hadn’t courage to read the doctor’s

letter herself, and asked me to do it. Though he gave a very bad account

of the young gentleman, he said that care and nursing, and getting him

away from a strange place to his own home and among his friends, might

do wonders for him yet. When I came to this part of the letter, she

started up, and asked me to give it to her. Then she inquired when I was

going back to Cornwall; and I said, “as soon as possible,” (for indeed,

it’s time I was home, William). “Wait; pray wait till I have shown this

letter to my father!” says she. And she ran out of the room with it in

her hand.

After some time, she came back with her face all of a flush, like;

looking quite different to what she did before, and saying that I had

done more to make the family happy by coming with that letter, than she

could ever thank me for as she ought. A gentleman followed her in, who

was her eldest brother (she said); the pleasantest, liveliest gentleman

I ever saw. He shook hands as if he had known me all his life; and told

me I was the first person he had ever met with who had done good in a

family by bringing them bad news. Then he asked me whether I was ready

to go to Cornwall the next morning with him, and the young lady, and

a friend of his who was a doctor. I had thought already of getting the

parting over with poor Susan, that very day: so I said, “Yes.” After

that, they wouldn’t let me go away till I had had something to eat and

drink; and the dear, kind young lady asked me all about Susan, and where

she was living, and about you and the children, just as if she had known

us like neighbours. Poor thing! she was so flurried, and so anxious for

the next morning, that it was all the gentleman could do to keep her

quiet, and prevent her falling into a sort of laughing and crying fit,

which it seems she had been liable to lately. At last they let me go

away: and I went and stayed with Susan as long as I could before I bid

her good-bye. She bore the parting bravely--poor, dear child! God in

heaven bless her; and I’m sure he will; for a better daughter no mother

ever had.

My dear husband, I am afraid this letter is very badly written; but

the tears are in my eyes, thinking of Susan; and I feel so wearied and

flurried after what has happened. We are to go off very early to-morrow

morning in a carriage, which is to be put on the railway. Only think

of my riding home in a fine carriage, with gentlefolks!--how surprised

Willie, and Nancy, and the other children will be! I shall get to Treen

almost as soon as my letter; but I thought I would write, so that you

might have the good news, the first moment it could get to you, to tell

the poor young gentleman. I’m sure it must make him better, only to hear

that his brother and sister are coming to fetch him home.

I can’t write any more, dear William, I’m so very tired; except that I

long to see you and the little ones again; and that I am,

Your loving and dutiful wife,

MARY PENHALE.

LETTER III.

TO MR. JOHN BERNARD, FROM THE WRITER OF THE FORE-GOING AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[This letter is nearly nine years later in date than the letters which

precede it.]

Lanreath Cottage, Breconshire.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I find, by your last letter, that you doubt whether I still remember

the circumstances under which I made a certain promise to you, more than

eight years ago. You are mistaken: not one of those circumstances has

escaped my memory. To satisfy you of this, I will now recapitulate them.

You will own, I think, that I have forgotten nothing.

After my removal from Cornwall (shall I ever forget the first sight of

Clara and Ralph at my bedside!), when the nervous malady from which

I suffered so long, had yielded to the affectionate devotion of my

family--aided by the untiring exercise of your skill--one of my first

anxieties was to show that I could gratefully appreciate your exertions

for my good, by reposing the same confidence in you, which I should

place in my nearest and dearest relatives. From the time when we first

met at the hospital, your services were devoted to me, through much

misery of mind and body, with the delicacy and the self-denial of a true

friend. I felt that it was only your due that you should know by what

trials I had been reduced to the situation in which you found me, when

you accompanied my brother and sister to Cornwall--I felt this; and

placed in your hands, for your own private perusal, the narrative which

I had written of my error and of its terrible consequences. To tell you

all that had happened to me, with my own lips, was more than I could do

then--and even after this lapse of years, would be more than I could do

now.

After you had read the narrative, you urged me, on returning it into my

possession, to permit its publication during my lifetime. I granted the

justness of the reasons which led you to counsel me thus; but I told

you, at the same time, that an obstacle, which I was bound to respect,

would prevent me from following your advice. While my father lived, I

could not suffer a manuscript in which he was represented (no matter

under what excess of provocation) as separating himself in the bitterest

hostility from his own son, to be made public property. I could not

suffer events of which we never afterwards spoke ourselves, to be given

to others in the form of a printed narrative which might perhaps fall

under his own eye. You acknowledged, I remember, the justice of these

considerations and promised, in case I died before him, to keep back

my manuscript from publication as long as my father lived. In binding

yourself to that engagement, however, you stipulated, and I agreed, that

I should reconsider your arguments in case I outlived him. This was my

promise, and these were the circumstances under which it was made.

You will allow, I think, that my memory is more accurate than you had

imagined it to be.

And now, you write to remind me of _my_ part of our

agreement--forbearing, with your accustomed delicacy, to introduce

the subject, until more than six months have elapsed since my father’s

death. You have done well. I have had time to feel all the consolation

afforded to me by the remembrance that, for years past, my life was of

some use in sweetening my father’s; that his death has occurred in the

ordinary course of Nature; and that I never, to my own knowledge, gave

him any cause to repent the full and loving reconciliation which took

place between us, as soon as we could speak together freely after my

return to home.

Still I am not answering your question:--Am I now willing to permit the

publication of my narrative, provided all names and places mentioned in

it remained concealed, and I am known to no one but yourself, Ralph, and

Clara, as the writer of my own story? I reply that I am willing. In a

few days, you will receive the manuscript by a safe hand. Neither my

brother nor my sister object to its being made public on the terms I

have mentioned; and I feel no hesitation in accepting the permission

thus accorded to me. I have not glossed over the flightiness of Ralph’s

character; but the brotherly kindness and manly generosity which lie

beneath it, are as apparent, I hope, in my narrative as they are in

fact. And Clara, dear Clara!--all that I have said of her is only to be

regretted as unworthy of the noblest subject that my pen, or any other

pen, can have to write on.

One difficulty, however, still remains:--How are the pages which I am

about to send you to be concluded? In the novel-reading sense of the

word, my story has no real conclusion. The repose that comes to all

of us after trouble--to _me,_ a repose in life: to others, how often

a repose only in the grave!--is the end which must close this

autobiography: an end, calm, natural, and uneventful; yet not, perhaps,

devoid of all lesson and value. Is it fit that I should set myself, for

the sake of effect, to _make_ a conclusion, and terminate by fiction

what has begun, and thus far, has proceeded in truth? In the interests

of Art, as well as in the interests of Reality, surely not!

Whatever remains to be related after the last entry in my journal, will

be found expressed in the simplest, and therefore, the best form, by the

letters from William and Mary Penhale, which I send you with this. When

I revisited Cornwall, to see the good miner and his wife, I found, in

the course of the inquiries which I made as to the past, that they still

preserved the letters they had written about me, while I lay ill at

Treen. I asked permission to take copies of these two documents,

as containing materials, which I could but ill supply from my own

resources, for filling up a gap in my story. They at once consented;

telling me that they had always kept each other’s letters after

marriage, as carefully as they kept them before, in token that their

first affection remained to the last unchanged. At the same time they

entreated me, with the most earnest simplicity, to polish their own

homely expressions; and turn them, as they phrased, it, into proper

reading. You may easily imagine that I knew better than to do this; and

you will, I am sure, agree with me that both the letters I send should

be printed as literally as they were copied by my hand.

Having now provided for the continuation of my story to the period of my

return home, I have a word or two to say on the subject of preparing the

autobiography for press. Failing in the resolution, even now, to

look over my manuscript again, I leave the corrections it requires to

others--but on one condition. Let none of the passages in which I

have related events, or described characters, be either softened

or suppressed. I am well aware of the tendency, in some readers,

to denounce truth itself as improbable, unless their own personal

experience has borne witness to it; and it is on this very account that

I am firm in my determination to allow of no cringing beforehand to

anticipated incredulities. What I have written is Truth; and it shall go

into the world as Truth should--entirely uncompromised. Let my style

be corrected as completely as you will; but leave characters and events

which are taken from realities, real as they are.

In regard to the surviving persons with whom this narrative associates

me, I have little to say which it can concern the reader to know. The

man whom I have presented in the preceding pages under the name

of Sherwin is, I believe, still alive, and still residing in

France--whither he retreated soon after the date of the last events

mentioned in my autobiography. A new system had been introduced into

his business by his assistant, which, when left to his own unaided

resources, he failed to carry out. His affairs became involved; a

commercial crisis occurred, which he was wholly unable to meet; and

he was made a bankrupt, having first dishonestly secured to himself a

subsistence for life, out of the wreck of his property. I accidentally

heard of him, a few years since, as maintaining among the English

residents of the town he then inhabited, the character of a man who had

undeservedly suffered from severe family misfortunes, and who bore his

afflictions with the most exemplary piety and resignation.

To those once connected with him, who are now no more, I need not and

cannot refer again. That part of the dreary Past with which they are

associated, is the part which I still shrink in terror from thinking on.

There are two names which my lips have not uttered for years; which,

in this life, I shall never pronounce again. The night of Death is over

them: a night to look away from for evermore.

To look away from--but, towards what object? The Future? That way, I see

but dimly even yet. It is on the Present that my thoughts are fixed, in

the contentment which desires no change.

For the last five months I have lived here with Clara--here, on the

little estate which was once her mother’s, which is now hers. Long

before my father’s death we often talked, in the great country house, of

future days which we might pass together, as we pass them now, in this

place. Though we may often leave it for a time, we shall always look

back to Lanreath Cottage as to our home. The years of retirement which

I spent at the Hall, after my recovery, have not awakened in me a single

longing to return to the busy world. Ralph--now the head of our family;

now aroused by his new duties to a sense of his new position--Ralph,

already emancipated from many of the habits which once enthralled and

degraded him, has written, bidding me employ to the utmost the resources

which his position enables him to offer me, if I decide on entering into

public life. But I have no such purpose; I am still resolved to live on

in obscurity, in retirement, in peace. I have suffered too much; I have

been wounded too sadly, to range myself with the heroes of Ambition, and

fight my way upward from the ranks. The glory and the glitter which I

once longed to look on as my own, would dazzle and destroy me, now.

Such shocks as I have endured, leave that behind them which changes the

character and the purpose of a life. The mountain-path of Action is no

longer a path for _me;_ my future hope pauses with my present happiness

in the shadowed valley of Repose.

Not a repose which owns no duty, and is good for no use; not a repose

which Thought cannot ennoble, and Affection cannot sanctify. To serve

the cause of the poor and the ignorant, in the little sphere which now

surrounds me; to smooth the way for pleasure and plenty, where pain and

want have made it rugged too long; to live more and more worthy, with

every day, of the sisterly love which, never tiring, never changing,

watches over me in this last retreat, this dearest home--these are the

purposes, the only purposes left, which I may still cherish. Let me but

live to fulfil them, and life will have given to me all that I can ask!

I may now close my letter. I have communicated to you all the materials

I can supply for the conclusion of my autobiography, and have furnished

you with the only directions I wish to give in reference to its

publication. Present it to the reader in any form, and at any time,

that you think fit. On its reception by the public I have no wish to

speculate. It is enough for me to know that, with all its faults, it has

been written in sincerity and in truth. I shall not feel false shame at

its failure, or false pride at its success.

If there be any further information which you think it necessary to

possess, and which I have forgotten to communicate, write to me on the

subject--or, far better, come here yourself, and ask of me with your own

lips all that you desire to know. Come, and judge of the life I am now

leading, by seeing it as it really is. Though it be only for a few days,

pause long enough in your career of activity and usefulness, of fame and

honour, to find leisure time for a visit to the cottage where we live.

This is as much Clara’s invitation as mine. She will never forget (even

if I could!) all that I have owed to your friendship--will never weary

(even if I should tire!) of showing you that we are capable of deserving

it. Come, then, and see _her_ as well as _me_--see her, once more, my

sister of old times! I remember what you said of Clara, when we last

met, and last talked of her; and I believe you will be almost as happy

to see her again in her old character as I am.

Till then, farewell! Do not judge hastily of my motives for persisting

in the life of retirement which I have led for so many years past. Do

not think that calamity has chilled my heart, or enervated my mind.

Past suffering may have changed, but it has not deteriorated me. It has

fortified my spirit with an abiding strength; it has told me plainly,

much that was but dimly revealed to me before; it has shown me uses to

which I may put my existence, that have their sanction from other voices

than the voices of fame; it has taught me to feel that bravest ambition

which is vigorous enough to overleap the little life here! Is there

no aspiration in the purposes for which I would now live?--Bernard!

whatever we can do of good, in this world, with our affections or our

faculties, rises to the Eternal World above us, as a song of praise from

Humanity to God. Amid the thousand, thousand tones ever joining to

swell the music of that song, are those which sound loudest and grandest

_here,_ the tones which travel sweetest and purest to the Imperishable

Throne; which mingle in the perfectest harmony with the anthem of the

angel-choir! Ask your own heart that question--and then say, may not

the obscurest life--even a life like mine--be dignified by a lasting

aspiration, and dedicated to a noble aim?

I have done. The calm summer evening has stolen on me while I have been

writing to you; and Clara’s voice--now the happy voice of the happy

old times--calls to me from our garden seat to come out and look at the

sunset over the distant sea. Once more--farewell!