looking on and listening as if fascinated by the words that smote her
heart—opened her arms to receive and cherish her precious babe; but the
boy was not destined to reach the white refuge of her breast. The
furious action of the Squire had been almost without aim, and the infant
fell against the sharp edge of the dresser down on to the stone floor.
Owen sprang up to take the child, but he lay so still, so motionless,
that the awe of death came over the father, and he stooped down to gaze
more closely. At that moment, the upturned, filmy eyes rolled
convulsively—a spasm passed along the body—and the lips, yet warm with
kissing, quivered into everlasting rest.
A word from her husband told Nest all. She slid down from her seat, and
lay by her little son as corpse-like as he, unheeding all the agonizing
endearments and passionate adjurations of her husband. And that poor,
desolate husband and father! Scarce one little quarter of an hour, and
he had been so blessed in his consciousness of love! the bright promise
of many years on his infant’s face, and the new, fresh soul beaming forth
in its awakened intelligence. And there it was; the little clay image,
that would never more gladden up at the sight of him, nor stretch forth
to meet his embrace; whose inarticulate, yet most eloquent cooings might
haunt him in his dreams, but would never more be heard in waking life
again! And by the dead babe, almost as utterly insensate, the poor
mother had fallen in a merciful faint—the slandered, heart-pierced Nest!
Owen struggled against the sickness that came over him, and busied
himself in vain attempts at her restoration.
It was now near noon-day, and Ellis Pritchard came home, little dreaming
of the sight that awaited him; but though stunned, he was able to take
more effectual measures for his poor daughter’s recovery than Owen had
done.
By-and-by she showed symptoms of returning sense, and was placed in her
own little bed in a darkened room, where, without ever waking to complete
consciousness, she fell asleep. Then it was that her husband, suffocated
by pressure of miserable thought, gently drew his hand from her tightened
clasp, and printing one long soft kiss on her white waxen forehead,
hastily stole out of the room, and out of the house.
Near the base of Moel Gêst—it might be a quarter of a mile from Ty
Glas—was a little neglected solitary copse, wild and tangled with the
trailing branches of the dog-rose and the tendrils of the white bryony.
Toward the middle of this thicket a deep crystal pool—a clear mirror for
the blue heavens above—and round the margin floated the broad green
leaves of the water-lily, and when the regal sun shone down in his
noonday glory the flowers arose from their cool depths to welcome and
greet him. The copse was musical with many sounds; the warbling of birds
rejoicing in its shades, the ceaseless hum of the insects that hovered
over the pool, the chime of the distant waterfall, the occasional
bleating of the sheep from the mountaintop, were all blended into the
delicious harmony of nature.
It had been one of Owen’s favourite resorts when he had been a lonely
wanderer—a pilgrim in search of love in the years gone by. And thither
he went, as if by instinct, when he left Ty Glas; quelling the uprising
agony till he should reach that little solitary spot.
It was the time of day when a change in the aspect of the weather so
frequently takes place; and the little pool was no longer the reflection
of a blue and sunny sky: it sent back the dark and slaty clouds above,
and, every now and then, a rough gust shook the painted autumn leaves
from their branches, and all other music was lost in the sound of the
wild winds piping down from the moorlands, which lay up and beyond the
clefts in the mountain-side. Presently the rain came on and beat down in
torrents.
But Owen heeded it not. He sat on the dank ground, his face buried in
his hands, and his whole strength, physical and mental, employed in
quelling the rush of blood, which rose and boiled and gurgled in his
brain as if it would madden him.
The phantom of his dead child rose ever before him, and seemed to cry
aloud for vengeance. And when the poor young man thought upon the victim
whom he required in his wild longing for revenge, he shuddered, for it
was his father!
Again and again he tried not to think; but still the circle of thought
came round, eddying through his brain. At length he mastered his
passions, and they were calm; then he forced himself to arrange some plan
for the future.
He had not, in the passionate hurry of the moment, seen that his father
had left the cottage before he was aware of the fatal accident that
befell the child. Owen thought he had seen all; and once he planned to
go to the Squire and tell him of the anguish of heart he had wrought, and
awe him, as it were, by the dignity of grief. But then again he durst
not—he distrusted his self-control—the old prophecy rose up in its
horror—he dreaded his doom.
At last he determined to leave his father for ever; to take Nest to some
distant country where she might forget her firstborn, and where he
himself might gain a livelihood by his own exertions.
But when he tried to descend to the various little arrangements which
were involved in the execution of this plan, he remembered that all his
money (and in this respect Squire Griffiths was no niggard) was locked up
in his escritoire at Bodowen. In vain he tried to do away with this
matter-of-fact difficulty; go to Bodowen he must: and his only hope—nay
his determination—was to avoid his father.
He rose and took a by-path to Bodowen. The house looked even more gloomy
and desolate than usual in the heavy down-pouring rain, yet Owen gazed on
it with something of regret—for sorrowful as his days in it had been, he
was about to leave it for many many years, if not for ever. He entered
by a side door opening into a passage that led to his own room, where he
kept his books, his guns, his fishing-tackle, his writing materials, et
cetera.
Here he hurriedly began to select the few articles he intended to take;
for, besides the dread of interruption, he was feverishly anxious to
travel far that very night, if only Nest was capable of performing the
journey. As he was thus employed, he tried to conjecture what his
father’s feelings would be on finding that his once-loved son was gone
away for ever. Would he then awaken to regret for the conduct which had
driven him from home, and bitterly think on the loving and caressing boy
who haunted his footsteps in former days? Or, alas! would he only feel
that an obstacle to his daily happiness—to his contentment with his wife,
and his strange, doting affection for the child—was taken away? Would
they make merry over the heir’s departure? Then he thought of Nest—the
young childless mother, whose heart had not yet realized her fulness of
desolation. Poor Nest! so loving as she was, so devoted to her child—how
should he console her? He pictured her away in a strange land, pining
for her native mountains, and refusing to be comforted because her child
was not.
Even this thought of the home-sickness that might possibly beset Nest
hardly made him hesitate in his determination; so strongly had the idea
taken possession of him that only by putting miles and leagues between
him and his father could he avert the doom which seemed blending itself
with the very purposes of his life as long as he stayed in proximity with
the slayer of his child.
He had now nearly completed his hasty work of preparation, and was full
of tender thoughts of his wife, when the door opened, and the elfish
Robert peered in, in search of some of his brother’s possessions. On
seeing Owen he hesitated, but then came boldly forward, and laid his hand
on Owen’s arm, saying,
“Nesta yr buten! How is Nest yr buten?”
He looked maliciously into Owen’s face to mark the effect of his words,
but was terrified at the expression he read there. He started off and
ran to the door, while Owen tried to check himself, saying continually,
“He is but a child. He does not understand the meaning of what he says.
He is but a child!” Still Robert, now in fancied security, kept calling
out his insulting words, and Owen’s hand was on his gun, grasping it as
if to restrain his rising fury.
But when Robert passed on daringly to mocking words relating to the poor
dead child, Owen could bear it no longer; and before the boy was well
aware, Owen was fiercely holding him in an iron clasp with one hand,
while he struck him hard with the other.
In a minute he checked himself. He paused, relaxed his grasp, and, to
his horror, he saw Robert sink to the ground; in fact, the lad was
half-stunned, half-frightened, and thought it best to assume
insensibility.
Owen—miserable Owen—seeing him lie there prostrate, was bitterly
repentant, and would have dragged him to the carved settle, and done all
he could to restore him to his senses, but at this instant the Squire
came in.
Probably, when the household at Bodowen rose that morning, there was but
one among them ignorant of the heir’s relation to Nest Pritchard and her
child; for secret as he tried to make his visits to Ty Glas, they had
been too frequent not to be noticed, and Nest’s altered conduct—no longer
frequenting dances and merry-makings—was a strongly corroborative
circumstance. But Mrs. Griffiths’ influence reigned paramount, if
unacknowledged, at Bodowen, and till she sanctioned the disclosure, none
would dare to tell the Squire.
Now, however, the time drew near when it suited her to make her husband
aware of the connection his son had formed; so, with many tears, and much
seeming reluctance, she broke the intelligence to him—taking good care,
at the same time, to inform him of the light character Nest had borne.
Nor did she confine this evil reputation to her conduct before her
marriage, but insinuated that even to this day she was a “woman of the
grove and brake”—for centuries the Welsh term of opprobrium for the
loosest female characters.
Squire Griffiths easily tracked Owen to Ty Glas; and without any aim but
the gratification of his furious anger, followed him to upbraid as we
have seen. But he left the cottage even more enraged against his son
than he had entered it, and returned home to hear the evil suggestions of
the stepmother. He had heard a slight scuffle in which he caught the
tones of Robert’s voice, as he passed along the hall, and an instant
afterwards he saw the apparently lifeless body of his little favourite
dragged along by the culprit Owen—the marks of strong passion yet visible
on his face. Not loud, but bitter and deep were the evil words which the
father bestowed on the son; and as Owen stood proudly and sullenly
silent, disdaining all exculpation of himself in the presence of one who
had wrought him so much graver—so fatal an injury—Robert’s mother entered
the room. At sight of her natural emotion the wrath of the Squire was
redoubled, and his wild suspicions that this violence of Owen’s to Robert
was a premeditated act appeared like the proven truth through the mists
of rage. He summoned domestics as if to guard his own and his wife’s
life from the attempts of his son; and the servants stood wondering
around—now gazing at Mrs. Griffiths, alternately scolding and sobbing,
while she tried to restore the lad from his really bruised and
half-unconscious state; now at the fierce and angry Squire; and now at
the sad and silent Owen. And he—he was hardly aware of their looks of
wonder and terror; his father’s words fell on a deadened ear; for before
his eyes there rose a pale dead babe, and in that lady’s violent sounds
of grief he heard the wailing of a more sad, more hopeless mother. For
by this time the lad Robert had opened his eyes, and though evidently
suffering a good deal from the effects of Owen’s blows, was fully
conscious of all that was passing around him.
Had Owen been left to his own nature, his heart would have worked itself
to doubly love the boy whom he had injured; but he was stubborn from
injustice, and hardened by suffering. He refused to vindicate himself;
he made no effort to resist the imprisonment the Squire had decreed,
until a surgeon’s opinion of the real extent of Robert’s injuries was
made known. It was not until the door was locked and barred, as if upon
some wild and furious beast, that the recollection of poor Nest, without
his comforting presence, came into his mind. Oh! thought he, how she
would be wearying, pining for his tender sympathy; if, indeed, she had
recovered the shock of mind sufficiently to be sensible of consolation!
What would she think of his absence? Could she imagine he believed his
father’s words, and had left her, in this her sore trouble and
bereavement? The thought madened him, and he looked around for some mode
of escape.
He had been confined in a small unfurnished room on the first floor,
wainscoted, and carved all round, with a massy door, calculated to resist
the attempts of a dozen strong men, even had he afterward been able to
escape from the house unseen, unheard. The window was placed (as is
common in old Welsh houses) over the fire-place; with branching chimneys
on either hand, forming a sort of projection on the outside. By this
outlet his escape was easy, even had he been less determined and
desperate than he was. And when he had descended, with a little care, a
little winding, he might elude all observation and pursue his original
intention of going to Ty Glas.
The storm had abated, and watery sunbeams were gilding the bay, as Owen
descended from the window, and, stealing along in the broad afternoon
shadows, made his way to the little plateau of green turf in the garden
at the top of a steep precipitous rock, down the abrupt face of which he
had often dropped, by means of a well-secured rope, into the small
sailing-boat (his father’s present, alas! in days gone by) which lay
moored in the deep sea-water below. He had always kept his boat there,
because it was the nearest available spot to the house; but before he
could reach the place—unless, indeed, he crossed a broad sun-lighted
piece of ground in full view of the windows on that side of the house,
and without the shadow of a single sheltering tree or shrub—he had to
skirt round a rude semicircle of underwood, which would have been
considered as a shrubbery had any one taken pains with it. Step by step
he stealthily moved along—hearing voices now, again seeing his father and
stepmother in no distant walk, the Squire evidently caressing and
consoling his wife, who seemed to be urging some point with great
vehemence, again forced to crouch down to avoid being seen by the cook,
returning from the rude kitchen-garden with a handful of herbs. This was
the way the doomed heir of Bodowen left his ancestral house for ever, and
hoped to leave behind him his doom. At length he reached the plateau—he
breathed more freely. He stooped to discover the hidden coil of rope,
kept safe and dry in a hole under a great round flat piece of rock: his
head was bent down; he did not see his father approach, nor did he hear
his footstep for the rush of blood to his head in the stooping effort of
lifting the stone; the Squire had grappled with him before he rose up
again, before he fully knew whose hands detained him, now, when his
liberty of person and action seemed secure. He made a vigorous struggle
to free himself; he wrestled with his father for a moment—he pushed him
hard, and drove him on to the great displaced stone, all unsteady in its
balance.
Down went the Squire, down into the deep waters below—down after him went
Owen, half consciously, half unconsciously, partly compelled by the
sudden cessation of any opposing body, partly from a vehement
irrepressible impulse to rescue his father. But he had instinctively
chosen a safer place in the deep seawater pool than that into which his
push had sent his father. The Squire had hit his head with much violence
against the side of the boat, in his fall; it is, indeed, doubtful
whether he was not killed before ever he sank into the sea. But Owen
knew nothing save that the awful doom seemed even now present. He
plunged down, he dived below the water in search of the body which had
none of the elasticity of life to buoy it up; he saw his father in those
depths, he clutched at him, he brought him up and cast him, a dead
weight, into the boat, and exhausted by the effort, he had begun himself
to sink again before he instinctively strove to rise and climb into the
rocking boat. There lay his father, with a deep dent in the side of his
head where the skull had been fractured by his fall; his face blackened
by the arrested course of the blood. Owen felt his pulse, his heart—all
was still. He called him by his name.
“Father, father!” he cried, “come back! come back! You never knew how I
loved you! how I could love you still—if—Oh God!”
And the thought of his little child rose before him. “Yes, father,” he
cried afresh, “you never knew how he fell—how he died! Oh, if I had but
had patience to tell you! If you would but have borne with me and
listened! And now it is over! Oh father! father!”
Whether she had heard this wild wailing voice, or whether it was only
that she missed her husband and wanted him for some little every-day
question, or, as was perhaps more likely, she had discovered Owen’s
escape, and come to inform her husband of it, I do not know, but on the
rock, right above his head, as it seemed, Owen heard his stepmother
calling her husband.
He was silent, and softly pushed the boat right under the rock till the
sides grated against the stones, and the overhanging branches concealed
him and it from all not on a level with the water. Wet as he was, he lay
down by his dead father the better to conceal himself; and, somehow, the
action recalled those early days of childhood—the first in the Squire’s
widowhood—when Owen had shared his father’s bed, and used to waken him in
the morning to hear one of the old Welsh legends. How long he lay
thus—body chilled, and brain hard-working through the heavy pressure of a
reality as terrible as a nightmare—he never knew; but at length he roused
himself up to think of Nest.
Drawing out a great sail, he covered up the body of his father with it
where he lay in the bottom of the boat. Then with his numbed hands he
took the oars, and pulled out into the more open sea toward Criccaeth.
He skirted along the coast till he found a shadowed cleft in the dark
rocks; to that point he rowed, and anchored his boat close in land. Then
he mounted, staggering, half longing to fall into the dark waters and be
at rest—half instinctively finding out the surest foot-rests on that
precipitous face of rock, till he was high up, safe landed on the turfy
summit. He ran off, as if pursued, toward Penmorfa; he ran with maddened
energy. Suddenly he paused, turned, ran again with the same speed, and
threw himself prone on the summit, looking down into his boat with
straining eyes to see if there had been any movement of life—any
displacement of a fold of sail-cloth. It was all quiet deep down below,
but as he gazed the shifting light gave the appearance of a slight
movement. Owen ran to a lower part of the rock, stripped, plunged into
the water, and swam to the boat. When there, all was still—awfully
still! For a minute or two, he dared not lift up the cloth. Then
reflecting that the same terror might beset him again—of leaving his
father unaided while yet a spark of life lingered—he removed the
shrouding cover. The eyes looked into his with a dead stare! He closed
the lids and bound up the jaw. Again he looked. This time he raised
himself out of the water and kissed the brow.
“It was my doom, father! It would have been better if I had died at my
birth!”
Daylight was fading away. Precious daylight! He swam back, dressed, and
set off afresh for Penmorfa. When he opened the door of Ty Glas, Ellis
Pritchard looked at him reproachfully, from his seat in the
darkly-shadowed chimney-corner.
“You’re come at last,” said he. “One of our kind (_i.e._, station) would
not have left his wife to mourn by herself over her dead child; nor would
one of our kind have let his father kill his own true son. I’ve a good
mind to take her from you for ever.”
“I did not tell him,” cried Nest, looking piteously at her husband; “he
made me tell him part, and guessed the rest.”
She was nursing her babe on her knee as if it was alive. Owen stood
before Ellis Pritchard.
“Be silent,” said he, quietly. “Neither words nor deeds but what are
decreed can come to pass. I was set to do my work, this hundred years
and more. The time waited for me, and the man waited for me. I have
done what was foretold of me for generations!”
Ellis Pritchard knew the old tale of the prophecy, and believed in it in
a dull, dead kind of way, but somehow never thought it would come to pass
in his time. Now, however, he understood it all in a moment, though he
mistook Owen’s nature so much as to believe that the deed was
intentionally done, out of revenge for the death of his boy; and viewing
it in this light, Ellis thought it little more than a just punishment for
the cause of all the wild despairing sorrow he had seen his only child
suffer during the hours of this long afternoon. But he knew the law
would not so regard it. Even the lax Welsh law of those days could not
fail to examine into the death of a man of Squire Griffith’s standing.
So the acute Ellis thought how he could conceal the culprit for a time.
“Come,” said he; “don’t look so scared! It was your doom, not your
fault;” and he laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder.
“You’re wet,” said he, suddenly. “Where have you been? Nest, your
husband is dripping, drookit wet. That’s what makes him look so blue and
wan.”
Nest softly laid her baby in its cradle; she was half stupefied with
crying, and had not understood to what Owen alluded, when he spoke of his
doom being fulfilled, if indeed she had heard the words.
Her touch thawed Owen’s miserable heart.
“Oh, Nest!” said he, clasping her in his arms; “do you love me still—can
you love me, my own darling?”
“Why not?” asked she, her eyes filling with tears. “I only love you more
than ever, for you were my poor baby’s father!”
“But, Nest—Oh, tell her, Ellis! _you_ know.”
“No need, no need!” said Ellis. “She’s had enough to think on. Bustle,
my girl, and get out my Sunday clothes.”
“I don’t understand,” said Nest, putting her hand up to her head. “What
is to tell? and why are you so wet? God help me for a poor crazed thing,
for I cannot guess at the meaning of your words and your strange looks!
I only know my baby is dead!” and she burst into tears.
“Come, Nest! go and fetch him a change, quick!” and as she meekly obeyed,
too languid to strive further to understand, Ellis said rapidly to Owen,
in a low, hurried voice—
“Are you meaning that the Squire is dead? Speak low, lest she hear.
Well, well, no need to talk about how he died. It was sudden, I see; and
we must all of us die; and he’ll have to be buried. It’s well the night
is near. And I should not wonder now if you’d like to travel for a bit;
it would do Nest a power of good; and then—there’s many a one goes out of
his own house and never comes back again; and—I trust he’s not lying in
his own house—and there’s a stir for a bit, and a search, and a
wonder—and, by-and-by, the heir just steps in, as quiet as can be. And
that’s what you’ll do, and bring Nest to Bodowen after all. Nay, child,
better stockings nor those; find the blue woollens I bought at Llanrwst
fair. Only don’t lose heart. It’s done now and can’t be helped. It was
the piece of work set you to do from the days of the Tudors, they say.
And he deserved it. Look in yon cradle. So tell us where he is, and
I’ll take heart of grace and see what can be done for him.”
But Owen sat wet and haggard, looking into the peat fire as if for
visions of the past, and never heeding a word Ellis said. Nor did he
move when Nest brought the armful of dry clothes.
“Come, rouse up, man!” said Ellis, growing impatient. But he neither
spoke nor moved.
“What is the matter, father?” asked Nest, bewildered.
Ellis kept on watching Owen for a minute or two, till on his daughter’s
repetition of the question, he said—
“Ask him yourself, Nest.”
“Oh, husband, what is it?” said she, kneeling down and bringing her face
to a level with his.