_Relates what happened to Mr. Lupton on the night of the
funeral.--Together with some curious information respecting Longstaff,
and Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Pale-thorpe._
It was late when Colin Clink and his wife retired to rest. Their
apartment lay in a snug recess formed by the projection outside of two
tower-like portions of the building, in one of which also his father's
room was situated.
Setting aside all melancholy and superstitious influences arising from
the mournful ceremony which, so short a time before, had taken place,
the night seemed sad and forbidding in itself. When he looked a few
moments from the window it was as though the blind, dead sky came close
to the panes. The landscape that lay far below appeared a black gulf,
over which the soughing of the wind sounded like the fitful panting
breath, the expiring complaints, of some vast unseen creature of the
darkness, whose existence might thus be shadowed to the ear, though not
to the eyes, of man. But when associated with the melancholy subject
which weighed heavily on all hearts, its influence became far more
sensibly felt; and Colin could not but feel as though nature had
conspired with death to impress the loss that had just been sustained
more solemnly upon the mind.
During an hour or more after Mr. Lupton had retired, Colin indistinctly
heard his footsteps as he paced restlessly up and down the room, musing,
perhaps, on both long past and recent events, contrasting each, and
planning how the actions of his life, could that race but be run over
again, should assume a form and regulation different, in many things, to
those that had been.
Colin himself could not sleep, but lay awhile lost in thoughtful
abstraction, until at length he was startled by the sound of heavier
and more hasty feet in Mr. Lupton's chamber; just as though, in turning
round, a man should suddenly encounter one whom he did not wish to
see, and hastily fall back to avoid a closer meeting. A moment or two
afterwards he heard a heavy fall upon the ground.
Our hero instantly leaped up and hurriedly dressed himself again; but
before he had time to get out of his room, Mr. Lupton's bell had been
rung, and his valet summoned to him. Finding such to be the case, Colin
remained within his chamber. But shortly afterwards a knocking was
heard at his door, and on opening it he found the valet standing in
fear outside, and scarcely able to deliver in intelligible language
the message with which he was charged, desiring Colin, at Mr. Lupton's
earnest request, to go into the other chamber to him immediately.
This, fearing something had happened, he accordingly did; and having bid
the servant wait with a light in an unoccupied room not far off, shut
the door after him.
Near the old fire-place, in which yet burned the last embers of what
had been a comfortable fire, he found Mr. Lupton sitting in an antique
carved arm-chair, with a marvellous appearance of composure, an
expression of stillness that seemed almost unnatural, as though the
finger of some awful event had been laid upon his vital powers, and had
suddenly almost stopped them. It was as though his heart feared to beat
or his lips to breathe. At the same time his flesh was ghastly white,
his features were rigid, and his eyes dilated with an indescribable
expression of terror.
“Are you ill, sir?” demanded Colin with much concern. Mr. Lupton only
pressed the hand of the young man, as if glad once more to lay hold of
flesh and blood, and then drew him close to his side, by way of reply.
“I hope nothing has occurred?” again observed Colin. “But you are
ill,--I see you are.”
“No!”--at length stammered his father tremulously, “but--my
boy--I--I--_have seen her!_”
And at the recollection of what he had seen, or fancied he had seen, he
shook violently, as though every nerve in his body was shattered.
“Seen who, sir?” exclaimed Colin, though turning pale with the instant
flash of consciousness that he _knew who_, as well as he that sat there
unmanned and trembling.
“She has been back to me, true enough,” said he again; and shaking his
head just as might a man upon whom the awful doubt of an after-life has
just been made a woful certainty,--a plain and demonstrative
certainty,--by the vision of an immateriality far more positive in
itself, than the plainest of those whom Shelley has so finely described
as
“The ghastly people of the realm of dream.”
“Never heed it now, sir,” rejoined the young man; “endeavour to calm
yourself, and try to forget it.”
“Forget it!” repeated Mr. Lupton incredulously: “never,--never!--Oh
no,--no!” And as he spoke with more energy, and raised his voice in a
pathetic manner as addressing some being unseen, he continued,--“Oh, my
wife, my wife!--I am indeed wretched, very wretched!”
Again Colin endeavoured to persuade him out of this painful fear; but it
was not until a considerable time had elapsed in these efforts that he
even partially succeeded. Having, however, at length done so, he
sat down beside his father and remained with him, engaged in serious
conversation until daylight on the following morning. During that
discourse it is believed Mr. Lupton informed his son of every particular
touching the sight or the imagination which had thus affected him; but
farther than that they were never made known. Mr. Lupton himself, during
the whole remainder of his life, was never known upon any occasion even
to allude to such a circumstance as having ever even happened; and no
one ever ventured to speak of it before him. While Colin himself, who on
various occasions was questioned by his friends as to the nature of the
occurrences on that mysterious night, invariably returned this answer,
“that if any supernatural revelation had been made to his father, to him
alone it belonged to reveal it if he would: but as for himself, he could
not have anything to do with the especial secrets and the bosom business
of another individual.”
This latter sentiment, however praiseworthy, I very strongly suspect to
be but a variation of one which he had often heard, and had picked up in
the learned school of Mr. Peter Veriquear.
Deprived as the curious thus were and are of information in that
direction, it yet became well known all over the country-side, some
time afterwards, that Mr. Lupton had become remarkably serious very soon
after his wife's death; and, unlike many in similar predicaments, from
whom such conduct might more have been expected, had actually continued
so ever since.
All the able theories that had been set afloat touching his second
marriage, for everybody, who knew nothing about it, believed he would be
married again, were found, day after day, and month after month, never
to be carried out on his part by any corresponding action; so that at
length the interested portion of the neighbourhood in this question were
fain to give him credit for being a good widower, who could not find in
his heart to marry again.
Another step also, which he subsequently took, must be here recorded.
After the occurrence of the important events so recently described,
Colin's father would no longer think of permitting him and his wife
again to leave the Hall and take up their residence elsewhere, as had
originally been intended. Considering all things that had happened, and
the state of his own feelings and sentiments thereon, Mr. Lupton now
declared it to be his fixed intention to instal the young couple at
once in that family residence, which he had already made provision
for eventually bequeathing to them, and of having them considered as
constituting, along with himself, the family and owners of the place. At
the same time he expressed his earnest desire that his son Colin should
take the management of his estates, as far as possible, into his own
hands; to which end he devoted considerable pains to qualify him;
observing that, however strange it might appear, he now felt but little
interest in those matters which formerly had occupied nearly all his
attention, and that for the future he wished to devote his time to such
study and pursuits as would be found more congenial with his feelings,
as well as better adapted to fit him for that great change which in no
very distant years he must undergo.
This arrangement being agreed to, and eventually acted upon, much to the
satisfaction of all parties, Colin was soon looked upon as the greatest
man in that parish where once we found him, a miserable child of
misfortune, turned rudely out of his cradle at night, and sent by a
hard-hearted steward to starve with his mother beneath the naked sky, or
find a shelter under the poorest hovel of the fields.
As to that same steward, the notorious Mr. Longstaff, whom, it may be
remembered, Colin's mother had once charged with having, in conjunction
with his wife, been the cause of her betrayal and misfortune, he had now
grown an old man, but still occupied the same situation, now that Colin
became his master, as he did when first the reader was introduced to
him.
Prophecies sometimes come true; or, rather let me say, that observations
made perhaps without a definite meaning, occasionally become prophetical
as proved by the event. When Mr. Longstaff turned Mrs. Clink out of her
house on the eventful night we have just alluded to, it will not perhaps
have been forgotten that she pointed towards the little bed in which our
then little hero lay, and addressing the steward, exclaimed, “_There's
a sting in that cradle for you yet!_” Mr. Longstaff himself remembered
these words, and trembled when he found to what influence and
station the Squire had exalted his son. And though, I verily believe,
notwithstanding his deserts, that Colin would never have molested him,
but rather have forgiven and returned good for evil, yet, as though
retributive justice was not to be turned aside, it oddly enough was
discovered by Colin and Mr. Lupton, on examining his accounts, that
certain defalcations to a large extent and of long standing existed,
and by the produce of which knavery it was supposed he had contrived to
bribe a sufficient number of independent ten pounders in a neighbouring
town to get his son, Mr. Chatham B. Longstaff, returned to Parliament,
as well as to portion off his two daughters, Miss Æneasina Laxton
and Miss Magota, on their respective marriages; one with a well-to-do
musician, and the other a ditto draper and haberdasher.
On this discovery the steward was peremptorily discharged, on Mr.
Lupton's authority, by Colin in person, and afterwards threatened with
a prosecution. But as he made himself quite as humble as he had before
been proud, said a great many pitiful things about the dignity of his
family and the ruin of his character, as well as promised to pay the
several sums back again, if not before, at least very soon after his son
should have got a place under Government, the Squire consented, under
the influence of his son's persuasions, to let the old boy off and
suffer the grievance to be hushed up by them, and misrepresented for the
better by Mr. Longstaff himself and his clever family.
I am not certain, but to the best of my memory Mr. Longstaff eventually
established himself as landlord of a small inn in a country town some
sixty or seventy miles from the scene of his former exploits. For this
duty, in fact, he was by nature quite as well, if not better qualified,
than for some other of a more ambitious nature which he had previously
taken upon himself.
To return to our more immediate friends, it is necessary now to state,
that although Mr. Lupton had practically given up almost every power and
authority connected with his own extensive establishment and estates,
and placed them in the hands of his son, he yet deemed it his duty to
continue those official duties connected with the administration of
justice which he had fulfilled during so long a period of years. Owing
to this determination on his part it is that we stand indebted for a
scene between two old and familiar acquaintances of the reader's,
which otherwise we could not have enjoyed any possible opportunity of
witnessing.
Some months had elapsed after the establishment of our hero in the house
of his father, when, one day, as he was pacing up and down the lawn,
with his wife upon his arm, he observed an unfortunate-looking woman,
with a countenance deeply expressive of disappointment and indignation,
advancing towards the Hall, and apparently from the direction of the
Whinmoor-road. The harsh and half-prim, half-slatternly outline of the
figure would instantly have assured him, even if other characteristics
had failed, that in the individual who approached he beheld the
never-to-be-forgotten Miss Sowersoft.
When sufficiently near to recognise her and be recognised by her, she
came to a full-stop, in order at a respectful distance to pass her
compliments, and evince her good-breeding by courtesying very low, and
muttering, “Good morning to you, sir!”
“Good morning, Miss Sowersoft!” answered Colin.
Again she courtesied as she addressed Mrs. Jane with another “Good
morning to you, ma'am!” She then continued, “I beg your pardon, sir, but
I am not Miss Sowersoft now. I am sure I never expected to say that I
_regretted_ being Mrs. Palethorpe!”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Colin. “How is that?”
“Oh, sir!” rejoined Mrs. Palethorpe, “I do not wish to remind you
of those circumstances--unfortunate circumstances I am sure they
were--which brought me into connexion with you in your juvenile days;
but I am sure you cannot forget what a brute that man was from first to
last: you must be aware that it was next to impossible for anybody to
live in the same house with him even at that time. But I have been a
poor infatuated creature!” Here she began to cry. “Though I am paying
dearly for it now! He is a sad man indeed!”
Colin now observed that his old mistress had very recently been favoured
with a remarkably black eye.
“Does he ill-use you?” demanded Colin more seriously.
“He is a disgrace, sir,--though I say it that should not,--a disgrace
and scandal to the name of man! I have come here, sir, I assure you, to
see if the Squire will bind him over to keep the peace towards me; for
only last night,--and it is his regular work now he is married, and
master of the farm,--only last night he came down from Barwick as drunk
as a lord, and he insisted on having a posset immediately. The fire was
out, sir,”--Mrs. Palethorpe here wept afresh,--“and Dorothy was gone to
bed.”
Mrs. Palethorpe could not (for human nature will fail and sink
sometimes) get any further.
Though Colin and Jane had much ado to forbear laughing at this account
of her grievances, the former yet requested her to be comforted; and
assured her that he had no doubt Mr. Lupton would very soon take
such steps with Mr. Palethorpe as should effectually prevent him from
resorting to personal violence for the future.
“As, I suppose,” he continued, “this black eye is an evidence of some of
his handiwork?”
“It is, sir!” exclaimed Mrs. Samuel, with passionate firmness. “I simply
told him as gently as I could how circumstances stood, when he made no
more to do than strike me two or three blows--he repeated them--in the
face, and made me this figure, that I am ashamed of anybody seeing me!”
And then she covered her face with her handkerchief.
Without farther parley, Colin now bade Mrs. Palethorpe follow him, and
led her into the presence of the Squire. That gentleman, for the first
time since the death of his wife, was observed to smile when made
acquainted with the poor woman's story. In the course of making out her
case, she informed Mr. Lupton how, upon her visit with Palethorpe to
London, she had somehow consented in a foolish moment to be married
to him, immediately on their return; that, accordingly, that event had
taken place at Barwick Church; how tipsy he got the first day of their
wedding; how scandalously he had neglected everything since, except his
drinking; and how abominably he had treated her almost from that very
day up to the present moment.
As Mr. Lupton had previously been made familiar with the whole story
of their love and their conduct by Colin, he did not feel any very deep
grief at Mrs. Palethorpe's present case; though, at the same time, he
rejoiced at the opportunity afforded him for punishing as degraded and
criminal a being as ever was brought before him. He accordingly issued
a warrant for Palethorpe's apprehension, and during the same day had him
brought up. When he made his appearance Colin was in the next room, and
beheld a countenance more expressive at once of the ferocious brute and
the sot than could probably be met with anywhere else throughout the
country side. Mr. Palethorpe seemed indeed to have made himself so
uncommonly glorious the night before, as to forestall all the glory of
the ensuing forty-eight hours. His eyes had much the look of a couple
of red coddled gooseberries, and his mouth that of one of those sun-made
rifts which, during the dry summer-time he trod over in his own baked
fallow fields.
“I didn't mean to hurt meesis!” said he, in reply to the complaint urged
against him. “I was raither insinuated in drink when I did it.”
“But you must be a most brutal fellow,” replied the Squire, “to strike
your own wife.”
[Illustration: 008]
“I didn't want to marry her!” exclaimed Palethorpe. “She collyfugled me
into it, by dint of likker and possets; and so she has herself to thank
for't!”
And on the delivery of this heroic sentiment Mr. Palethorpe stared at
all present with the confidence of one who feels that the victory is
already his. Unluckily for him, however, Mr. Lupton did not take that
sort of logic as correspondent with law; but instead, ordered him to pay
a crown for having been drunk, and committed him for a fortnight to
that identical place to which the prisoner himself and his lady had once
threatened to send Colin,--I mean York Castle,--for the assault upon his
wife. In addition to this, it is perhaps scarcely necessary to add, he
was bound in sureties to keep the peace towards all the King's subjects
for the space of one year;--a restriction which not only materially
lessened the amount of domestic revolutions in the farm at Whinmoor,
but also the number of physical outbreaks at the various pot-houses and
village wakes throughout the surrounding neighbourhood.
Unblessed with any of those delightful little children to rear up and
spoil, upon which she had so enthusiastically counted,--rendered still
more crabbed than ever before by the lasting disappointment she had
experienced, Mrs. Palethorpe passed a life of that peculiar kind of
misery which has no parallel here on earth, but which any married couple
desirous of testing may do so by carrying on against each other,
in small matters as well as in great, an everlasting war of mutual
annoyances and reprisals upon each other's happiness.
In other words, she and her husband, during their whole after journey
through the world, regarded each other as the most mortal enemy that
either had ever encountered.