|HOWEVER Dr Haldane, at my Lady's own request, may have misrepresented
to the young folks at the Abbey the motives which had caused her flight,
he told them truth as respected Derrick. That unfortunate man had indeed
met with the frightful mischance described. When he left Mary Forest on
the previous night, his mind confused with vague revengeful passion, and
his brain muddled with blows, as well as with the spirits he had of late
taken in such quantities, and the effects of which were beginning to
tell upon his exhausted frame, he had staggered up Mirkland Hill almost
like one in a dream. The night was pitchy dark, and although ever
and anon a burst of light came forth from the fireworks in the Abbey
grounds, they were of course perfectly useless for his guidance. The top
of the hill being quite bare of trees, was less obscure than the way he
had already come, and in any other circumstances he could scarce have
come to harm; but as it was, stumbling blindly on with his head low, he
entered the mill-yard through that fatal gap in the wall, without even
knowing he had left the highroad. The very roaring of the sails, which
revolved dangerously near the ground, might have warned him, but that
his ears were already occupied with the seething and tumult of his own
brain; and when the terrible thing struck him, before which he went down
upon the instant as the ox falls before the poleaxe, he never so much as
knew from what he had received his hurt. There he lay for more than an
hour, underneath the whirling sails, which one after another came round
to peer over his haggard face, gashed with that frightful wound. The lad
in charge knew nothing of what had happened, being engaged in the top
story watching the fireworks in the park beneath; but about midnight he
stopped the mill, and descending with his lantern, its rays by chance
fell upon Ralph's prostrate body. Some persons returning from the
festivities at the Abbey happened to be going by at that very time, and
with their assistance he was carried across the road to the lodge at
Belcomb (there being no sort of accommodation for one in his condition
at the mill), and from thence to Madame de Castellan's little cottage.
That lady was for the time, as she had stated in her letter to Sir
Richard, the sole inhabitant of Belcomb; but with the injured man, old
Rachel and her husband the gatekeeper of course arrived, and the former
did what she could as sick-nurse until the arrival of Dr Haldane, for
whom a messenger was at once despatched. The old Frenchwoman, who was
aroused with difficulty, and characteristically kept them waiting at
the door while she made herself fit for the reception of company, was so
shocked and terrified by what had happened, that she was at first of no
use at all. She had expressed herself in broken English as being very
glad to be of any service to the poor sufferer while they were bearing
him within, and had even busied herself in procuring hot water and
bandages; but no sooner did she catch sight of his ghastly face, seamed
with that cruel gash, than all her resolution appeared to desert her,
and she swooned away. By the time the doctor arrived, however, she had
established herself in the sick-room, and although he had described
her as incapable of doing much in the way of tendance, she was at least
doing her best.
As for Ralph, he lay breathing stertorously, but quite motionless and
unconscious. His mighty chest rose and fell, but by no means equably;
his large brown hairy hands lay outstretched before him on the white
coverlet; his face washed clean indeed from the recent blood-stains, but
with the tangled beard still clotted with gore. It seemed strange that
that powerful English frame of his should lie there so helplessly,
while Madame, with her snow-white hair and delicate fragile hands, was
ministering to him with such patient care; she that must have been
his senior, one would have thought to look at them, by at least twenty
years. Perhaps it was the sense of this contrast which caused the
doctor to glance from the one to the other so earnestly, even before he
commenced his examination of the wounded man.
“Will he live?” asked Madame in English. “God knows,” added she with
trembling accents, “that I have no other wish within my heart but to
hear you say 'Yes.'”
“Of course, Madame,” returned the other with meaning, “I do not pay
you so ill a compliment as to suppose you to wish him dead, because he
inconveniences you by his presence here; but I cannot say 'Yes' or 'No,'
He is terribly hurt. The spine is injured; and there are ribs broken
which I cannot even look to now. But it is here”--he pointed to the
forehead--“where the worst danger lies: unhappily, the mischief has been
done when he was--in the worst possible state to bear such a blow in
such a place.”
“Does he know, doctor”----
“He knows nothing, Madame; perhaps he may never know. You must not speak
so much, however; or, if so, pray use your native tongue. It is better,
if consciousness does return, that the brain should be kept quite quiet.
I think you had better retire to your room, Madame, and leave myself and
Rachel to manage.”
“Yes, yes, we can do very well, lady,” assented old Rachel. “This is not
a place for such as Madame, is it, sir? If we could only get Mistress
Forest, now; she is first-rate at nursing; she nursed me for three
whole nights last winter, when I was most uncommon had with the shivers,
caught a-coming from Dalwynch in the spring-cart--and the cover on it,
when it don't rain, is worse than nothing, for there's such a draught
drives right through it”----
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the doctor impatiently; “you are quite right,
Rachel. We'll send for Mistress Forest the first thing in the morning:
she can easily be spared from the Abbey, now my Lady's away.”
“Ah, the more's the pity!” returned old Rachel. “And this looks almost
like a judgment, don't it, sir, that this poor man, who was so rude to
my dear mistress--or wanted to be, as I have heard--should have been
carried in under her own roof here, feet foremost”----
“Be silent, woman!” broke in Madame de Castellan with severity. “We have
nothing to do with Lady Lisgard's affairs here. This house is my house
for the present; this wounded man is my guest.”
“Speak French, speak French, Madame,” exclaimed the doctor imploringly.
“Did you not hear me say so before? You had much better return to bed.”
“No, no,” returned Madame, in her native tongue; “I cannot do it. I will
be prudent, I will be careful for the future; but I cannot leave him,
until, at all events, Mary Forest comes. O send her--send her, and let
this woman go, whose presence is intolerable to me.”
Accordingly, in his visit to Belcomb about noon next day, the doctor
brought Mistress Forest over with him, who was at once installed as
Ralph Derrick's sick-nurse; old Rachel being sent home to the lodge.
No change had as yet taken place in the sufferer; but the doctor's
practised eye perceived that one was impending. This time, he made a
long and earnest examination of his patient.
“Will he live?” asked Madame again, when he had finished, with the same,
earnestness, nay, even anguish as before.
“There is hope; yes, I think there is hope,” returned the doctor
cautiously.
“Thank God for that; I thank Him for His great mercy!” ejaculated Madame
with clasped hands and upturned eyes.
“Who is that?” inquired a hoarse voice from the bed. The words were
indistinct, and uttered with difficulty, but on every ear within that
room they smote with the most keen significance. The two women turned
deadly pale; and even the doctor's finger shook as he placed it to his
lips, in sign that they should keep silent.
“Hush, my good friend,” said he to the wounded man, whose eyes were now
open wide, and staring straight before him: “you must not talk just now;
speaking is very bad for you.”
“Who is that who was thanking God because there was hope of my life?”
reiterated Ralph. “Neither man nor woman has any cause to do that, I'm
sure; while some have cause enough to pray that I were dead already,
or at least had lost my wits. Doctor--for I suppose you _are_ a
doctor--have I lost my wits or not? Am I a sane man, or one not in my
right mind?”
“Hush, hush; you are sane enough of course, except to keep on talking
thus when I tell you that to speak is to do yourself the most serious
harm.”
“You hear him--all you in the room here,” continued the sick man in a
voice which, though low and feeble, had a sort of malignant triumph in
it, which grated on the ear. “This doctor says I am quite sane. He says
also that there is hope of my life--just a shadow of a hope. He is wrong
there, for I shall die. But, anyhow, I lie in peril of death, and yet in
my right mind. Therefore, what I say is to be credited--that, I believe,
is the law; and even the law is right sometimes. What I am about to say
is Truth--every word of it. I wish to make a statement.--No, I will take
no medicines; pen and ink, if I could only write, would be more welcome
than the Elixir of Life, but I cannot.” Here a groan was wrung from
his parched and bloodless lips. “O Heaven! the pain I suffer; it is the
foretaste of the hell for which I am bound!”
“O sir,” ejaculated Mistress Forest, moving to the bed foot, so as to
shew herself to his staring eyes, “think of heaven, not of hell. Ask for
pardon of God, and not of revenge upon man.”
“Ah, it is you, is it, good wench? I thought that no one else could have
wished me well so piously a while ago. You did me an ill turn, although
you did not mean to do so, when you let me out of the Cage last night.
Was it last night, or a week, or a month ago?”
“It was only last night,” interposed the doctor gravely. “Now, do not
ask any more questions, or I shall have to forbid them being answered.
It is my duty to tell you that with every word you speak your life is
ebbing away.”
“Then there is the less time to lose,” answered Derrick obstinately.
“As for answering me, I do not want that. All I ask of you is, that
you shall listen; and what I say, I charge you all, as a dying man,
to remember--to repeat--to proclaim.” Here he paused from
weakness.--“Doctor,” gasped he, “a glass of brandy--a large glass, for
I am used to it. I _must_ have it.--Good. I feel stronger now. Do you
think, if you took down my words in writing, that I could manage”--here
a shudder seemed to shake his poor bruised and broken frame, as though
with the anticipation of torture--“to set down my name at the bottom of
it?”
“No, my poor fellow--no. You could no more grasp a pen at present than
you could rise and leave this house upon your feet. You must feel that
yourself.”
“I do--I do,” groaned Ralph. “It is all the more necessary, then, that
you should listen. My real name is not that one by which I have, been
known at Mirk. It is not Derrick, but Gavestone: the same name, good
wench, by which your mistress went before she was married to Sir Robert
Lisgard. But that was not her maiden name--no, no. Do you not wonder
while I tell you this? or did I speak of it last night, when I was mad
with drink and rage?”
“You said something of the sort, sir; but I knew it all before that. You
are my Lady's husband, and Sir Richard and the rest are all her bastard
children--that is, in the eye of the law.”
“You knew it, did you?” returned Ralph after a pause. “You were in the
plot with her against me, then? I am glad of that. I should be sorry to
have left the world fooled to the last; for I thought that you at least
were an honest wench, although all the world else were liars. So, after
all, you knew it, did you? Well, at all events, it is news to the doctor
here.”
“No, sir,” returned the old gentleman, quietly applying some _Eau de
Cologne_ and water to the patient's brow; “I must confess I knew it
also.”
“And yet you told nobody!” ejaculated Ralph. “You suffered this
imposture to go on unexposed!”
“I only heard of the facts, you speak of--from Lady Lisgard's own
lips--two days ago at furthest,” returned Dr Haldane; “and I certainly
told nobody, since the telling could do no good to any human being--not
even to yourself, for instance--and would bring utter ruin and disgrace
upon several worthy persons.”
“Ha, ha!” chuckled the patient hoarsely; “you are right, there. Disgrace
upon that insolent Sir Richard, and on that ungrateful puppy, Master
Walter.”
“True,” continued the doctor gravely; “and upon Miss Letty, who is dear
to all who know her, but dearest to the poor and friendless.”
“I am sorry for her,” said Derrick; “but I am not sorry for my Lady--she
that could look me in the face, and hear me tell the story of our early
love, and of her own supposed death, to avert which I so gladly risked
my life, and all without a touch of pity.”
“No, sir, with much pity,” broke forth Mistress Forest. “I myself know
that her heart bled for you. She never loved Sir Robert as she did
you, ungrateful man! She loved you dead and alive; she loves you now,
although you pursue her with such cruel hate, and would bring shame upon
all her innocent children.”
“Ay, why not?” answered Ralph. “Have they not had their day, and is
it not my turn at last? Who is the woman behind the curtains? Let her
stand forth, that I may see her; she, at least, is not a creature of 'my
Lady,' like you and the doctor here, and ready, for her sake, to hide
the truth and perpetuate my wrongs. Let that woman stand forth, I say.”