Let after reckonings trouble fearful fools;
I'll stand the trial of these trivial crimes.
DRYDEN.
The time shall come, nor long remote, when thou
Shall feel far more than thou inflictest now;
Feel for thy vile self-loving self in vain,
And turn thee howling in unpitied pain.
BYRON.
To explain the chief incidents of the last chapter, it is our necessary,
though repellent task to retrograde some six months past, and enter the
gloomy mansion of Montrevor, where all that time its infirm master lay,
like a chained enchanter on his bed of sickness.
His son had late that day left for London, amply supplied with those
funds to supply his exigencies, which he had little difficulty now in
drawing from the resources of the now powerless old dotard.
A few hours later, when darkness had closed in, and the house was hushed
and still, a woman's form was seen issuing from the old man's chamber.
It was Mabel Marryott. She was changed from the day we last saw her,
sailing along the passages of Montrevor. She came forward with a slow,
uncertain step, holding a shawl wrapped loosely over her breast; and the
lamp she carried in the other hand showed her countenance to bear a sick
and ghastly expression, betokening the painful disease through which she
finally perished, to have already laid its sharp fangs on her system.
But though bodily strength might be subdued, no mental debilitation
seemed the consequence. She went straight forward to the door of her
master's library; entering without a pause of fear, or conscious
stricken awe, that gloomy haunt of many sinful and accusing memories,
she shut the door behind her, placed the lamp upon a table and sat down
to rest, her eyes wandering deliberately round the room fearing little
to encounter the spiritual shades of the past--the meek upbraiding of
one wronged being's saintly eyes--the noble scorn--the scathing
indignation of another's. She feared not yet either angel or spirit, her
day of fear was yet to come. She looked round with a keen scrutinizing
glance of survey, and then she rose and went composedly to work; she had
the field to herself, and one master-key which the old man had managed
to keep concealed even from his son, she had contrived by strict
vigilance to discover the hiding-place, and get into her possession.
"Thou fool!" might have seemed the utterance of her heart, as with a
look of fiendish mockery she flung open the depository into which she
thus found entrance, and viewed the glittering treasures it contained.
"Thou fool! thou hast indeed many goods laid up for many years, and this
night--perhaps this night, this very night, thy dotard soul may be
required of thee."
"Thou fool! how long hast _thou_ to live," the spirit of air might have
echoed in _her_ ear, as the woman proceeded on her work of iniquity.
But strange the insane delusion by which each man would seem to deem
all men mortal but themselves. Even with that fatal malady gnawing on
her very vitals. Mabel Marryott trusting in an arm of flesh, confidant
in human skill, was laying in store for herself many years of
anticipatory pleasure, ease, and competence.
With a well-filled purse of gold, she then had for the present turned
away content--gold which the old man she thought would never rise from
his bed to demand, and of which his heirs could guess only the
existence; and thus she would have departed, had not her quick eye
suddenly discovered a secret recess, which from the difficulty she had
in opening it, more keenly excited her curiosity and interest.
By dint of much trouble and exertion the aperture finally yielded, and a
heap of papers, which had to all appearance been carelessly thrust in
together, was the issue of her research. They were bank-notes. One after
another, she read the tempting numbers--hesitated--replaced them, and
finally divided and pocketed the half.
Two hours after this deed had been perpetrated, some one came knocking
gently at the door of Mr. Trevor's chamber, to which Mrs. Marryott had
returned to inform her that a young woman had arrived, desiring to
speak with her. Mrs. Marryott kept the person waiting some little time
for she was giving Mr. Trevor his arrow-root; but at length went down to
her sitting-room, where she found a woman of decent appearance though
poorly attired, seated patiently awaiting her coming; a dark cloak
wrapped around her, and a large bonnet and veil nearly concealing her
face.
On perceiving Marryott she rose, and to the inquiry: "What was her
business?" the stranger put back her veil, and showing her pale and
anxious countenance, in tremulous accents murmured: "Mother!"
Surprise was at first strongly depicted on Marryott's countenance; but
the next instant the hard impenetrable expression of her face returned,
in a cold measured tone she demanded what it might be that brought her
there?
"Mother; have you no words of kindness to give your daughter?" faltered
the poor woman.
"Words of kindness--pshaw! is that all you have come this long way for,"
the other answered impatiently.
"Alas! no mother," was the sorrowful reply, drooping her head
despairingly; "but if you have not even those to give me, how can I ask
for more."
"More! ah, I thought so--I thought that pride would have a fall at last:
that you would put your virtue into your pocket, and be coming one day
crawling on your knees to beg a morsel of bread, or a hole in this
house, from the mother who was not _good_ enough for you some years ago.
So I suppose your lover won't have you now that you are old and
ugly--bah! don't think that I will take you in here; if this house was
not good enough for you _then_, it's none the better _now_. At any rate
there's no place in it for you, so you must go back from whence you
came."
"Mother, mother--do not speak so cruelly--do not blame me, if knowing
what was good and what was evil, I could not come to live here, hearing
of you what I did. But alas! my spirit indeed waxeth faint, and my
strength faileth me. I am worn out with useless labour, and I come to
ask a little help from the mother who bore me, trusting that God will
forgive both her and me, for we have all sinned--all stand in need of
forgiveness. * * Yes, I come to ask for a little help to take me to
America--to Henry Wilson, who still waits for and expects me."
"Oh, that's it,"--with a scornful laugh--"it's money you want; those
'wages of iniquity,' which you scorned at so finely long ago."
"Mother--those were strong words perhaps for a daughter so young to use
towards a mother, but my heart was grieved for you; it was in sorrowful
affection, not undutiful scorn, that I thus spoke."
Mabel Marryott sat down--she had hitherto remained coldly standing--and
signed to her daughter to do the same. The submissive manner Jane had
assumed, probably in a degree mollifying her hardened spirit; or rather
perhaps it was a sort of triumph, to see her virtuous child thus brought
low before her. She had quite lived down any womanly or maternal
feeling; and would probably, without the slightest compunction, have
turned her from the door penniless as she came: yet something--perhaps
the idea that it would be disagreeable and degrading to her high
pretensions, to have that poor, shabby creature coming begging at the
house as her daughter--made her calculate that it might be a better plan
to get rid of her at once--easily as it was in her power now to
accomplish it. Those notes still in her pocket, she had begun already to
repent not having left them in their hiding place--bank notes were
terrible things to meddle with, but at any rate no harm could come of
their being put in use by one under Jane Marryott's circumstances.
In short, it ended as we all know by those twice guilty papers being
transferred into the hands of the innocent; and Jane Marryott--bound by
the promise of strict secrecy, which she so resolutely maintained
inviolate--left the house without any member of the household having
been made aware of her identity, with the unblessed cause of fresh
misfortune in her possession. With the unhappy sequel we are acquainted.
* * * * *
Six months had passed, and Mabel Marryott lay groaning on a bed of
agony. The pains of hell truly had got hold of her, and
conscience--faint foretaste of the never dying worm, rose up to torment
her "before her time," with the dark catalogue of remembered sin--sin
unrepented, and therefore unforgiven. She would not turn to the one
sure fountain, open for sin and for uncleaness. She even repulsed all
offers of spiritual ministration from those members of the household who
had thought and feeling, to see the awful nature of the dying woman's
position.
"No, she wanted no clergymen, they could avail her nothing--could not
undo one of the sins she had committed." But at length one day, she sent
to desire Eugene Trevor would come himself and speak to her in private.
He came, and lifting herself up with difficulty in her bed, she turned
her ghastly countenance towards her foster-son as he stood by her side,
and fixing her sunken eyes upon him, addressed him thus:
"Eugene Trevor, my daughter is to be tried this week at ---- for
forgery."
"So I was sorry to hear, Mabel; but there seems, I think, every chance
of her being acquitted."
"Chance--yes; but I am not going to leave it to chance, and die with
this too on my conscience. I have been a bad mother from the first, I
forsook the child at my breast for the hire of a stranger, and cast her
on the world to shift for herself in toil and trouble; and last of all,
by my stolen charity have brought this curse upon her. Yes, Eugene
Trevor," she added, emphatically, "I stole those notes from your
father's chest, and gave them to the girl--but who _forged_ them?"
Eugene Trevor started as if an adder had stung him; and turning ashy
pale, sunk down upon a chair that stood near.
"What--what in the name of Heaven do you mean, Marryott?" he stammered
forth.
"Eugene Trevor, do not try to deceive a dying woman. I have confessed my
part of the business, do not deny yours. There was not much which passed
between you and your father that night ten years ago, that I did not
overhear, and which now put together, would be enough to commit
_you_--but do not fear, I am not going to betray you, only do my
bidding; go to ---- and get that girl free--it matters little to me, who
shall be dead perhaps, before the morning, what I'm thought of; go and
tell them that _I_ gave the notes, and that _she_ was ignorant of this
falsity--go, get her off, and come back and tell me she is free, and I
die silent; if not, as sure as I lie here a dying woman, I send for a
magistrate and tell him all."
Eugene Trevor's discomfiture and perturbation at this disclosure may be
imagined. He had been surprised at the time of her apprehension, to see
the account of Jane Marryott's examination in the papers, but Mabel had
professed such perfect ignorance on the subject--such careless
indifference concerning the trouble of her daughter, that though the
coincidence of the notes might strike him as singular, it scarcely
occurred to him as possible that those half-forgotten instruments of his
youthful crime, which he had not for a moment doubted his father
immediately destroyed, could possibly have fallen into the prisoner's
hands.
There was nothing to be done but to obey his accuser's wishes, knowing
well the determined spirit of that fearful woman, so that there would be
no other way of preventing her, even with her dying lips, declaring the
part he had in the dark transaction in question. He therefore took all
necessary precautions and started on his critical commission with as
little delay as possible, receiving before his departure, the formal
summons from Arthur Seaham to attend as witness on the trial.