Leaving the favoured, and well-received, and flattered of the world;
him of the world most worldly, who never compromised himself by an
ungentlemanly action, and never was guilty of a manly one; to lie
smilingly asleep--for even sleep, working but little change in his
dissembling face, became with him a piece of cold, conventional
hypocrisy--we follow in the steps of two slow travellers on foot, making
towards Chigwell.
Barnaby and his mother. Grip in their company, of course.
The widow, to whom each painful mile seemed longer than the last, toiled
wearily along; while Barnaby, yielding to every inconstant impulse,
fluttered here and there, now leaving her far behind, now lingering far
behind himself, now darting into some by-lane or path and leaving her
to pursue her way alone, until he stealthily emerged again and came upon
her with a wild shout of merriment, as his wayward and capricious nature
prompted. Now he would call to her from the topmost branch of some high
tree by the roadside; now using his tall staff as a leaping-pole, come
flying over ditch or hedge or five-barred gate; now run with surprising
swiftness for a mile or more on the straight road, and halting, sport
upon a patch of grass with Grip till she came up. These were his
delights; and when his patient mother heard his merry voice, or looked
into his flushed and healthy face, she would not have abated them by one
sad word or murmur, though each had been to her a source of suffering in
the same degree as it was to him of pleasure.
It is something to look upon enjoyment, so that it be free and wild and
in the face of nature, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. It is
something to know that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such
a creature’s breast; it is something to be assured that, however lightly
men may crush that faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of
mankind imparts it even to his despised and slighted work. Who would not
rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight, than a wise man pining in
a darkened jail!
Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite
Benevolence with an eternal frown; read in the Everlasting Book, wide
open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in
black and sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music--save
when ye drown it--is not in sighs and groans, but songs and cheerful
sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one
dismal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and pleasure
which every glad return of day awakens in the breast of all your kind
who have not changed their nature; and learn some wisdom even from the
witless, when their hearts are lifted up they know not why, by all the
mirth and happiness it brings.
The widow’s breast was full of care, was laden heavily with secret dread
and sorrow; but her boy’s gaiety of heart gladdened her, and beguiled
the long journey. Sometimes he would bid her lean upon his arm, and
would keep beside her steadily for a short distance; but it was more his
nature to be rambling to and fro, and she better liked to see him free
and happy, even than to have him near her, because she loved him better
than herself.
She had quitted the place to which they were travelling, directly after
the event which had changed her whole existence; and for two-and-twenty
years had never had courage to revisit it. It was her native village.
How many recollections crowded on her mind when it appeared in sight!
Two-and-twenty years. Her boy’s whole life and history. The last time
she looked back upon those roofs among the trees, she carried him in her
arms, an infant. How often since that time had she sat beside him night
and day, watching for the dawn of mind that never came; how had she
feared, and doubted, and yet hoped, long after conviction forced itself
upon her! The little stratagems she had devised to try him, the little
tokens he had given in his childish way--not of dulness but of something
infinitely worse, so ghastly and unchildlike in its cunning--came back
as vividly as if but yesterday had intervened. The room in which they
used to be; the spot in which his cradle stood; he, old and elfin-like
in face, but ever dear to her, gazing at her with a wild and vacant
eye, and crooning some uncouth song as she sat by and rocked him; every
circumstance of his infancy came thronging back, and the most trivial,
perhaps, the most distinctly.
His older childhood, too; the strange imaginings he had; his terror of
certain senseless things--familiar objects he endowed with life; the
slow and gradual breaking out of that one horror, in which, before his
birth, his darkened intellect began; how, in the midst of all, she had
found some hope and comfort in his being unlike another child, and had
gone on almost believing in the slow development of his mind until he
grew a man, and then his childhood was complete and lasting; one after
another, all these old thoughts sprung up within her, strong after their
long slumber and bitterer than ever.
She took his arm and they hurried through the village street. It was
the same as it was wont to be in old times, yet different too, and wore
another air. The change was in herself, not it; but she never thought of
that, and wondered at its alteration, and where it lay, and what it was.
The people all knew Barnaby, and the children of the place came flocking
round him--as she remembered to have done with their fathers and mothers
round some silly beggarman, when a child herself. None of them knew her;
they passed each well-remembered house, and yard, and homestead; and
striking into the fields, were soon alone again.
The Warren was the end of their journey. Mr Haredale was walking in the
garden, and seeing them as they passed the iron gate, unlocked it, and
bade them enter that way.
‘At length you have mustered heart to visit the old place,’ he said to
the widow. ‘I am glad you have.’
‘For the first time, and the last, sir,’ she replied.
‘The first for many years, but not the last?’
‘The very last.’
‘You mean,’ said Mr Haredale, regarding her with some surprise, ‘that
having made this effort, you are resolved not to persevere and are
determined to relapse? This is unworthy of you. I have often told you,
you should return here. You would be happier here than elsewhere, I
know. As to Barnaby, it’s quite his home.’
‘And Grip’s,’ said Barnaby, holding the basket open. The raven hopped
gravely out, and perching on his shoulder and addressing himself to Mr
Haredale, cried--as a hint, perhaps, that some temperate refreshment
would be acceptable--‘Polly put the ket-tle on, we’ll all have tea!’
‘Hear me, Mary,’ said Mr Haredale kindly, as he motioned her to walk
with him towards the house. ‘Your life has been an example of patience
and fortitude, except in this one particular which has often given me
great pain. It is enough to know that you were cruelly involved in the
calamity which deprived me of an only brother, and Emma of her father,
without being obliged to suppose (as I sometimes am) that you associate
us with the author of our joint misfortunes.’
‘Associate you with him, sir!’ she cried.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘I think you do. I almost believe that
because your husband was bound by so many ties to our relation, and died
in his service and defence, you have come in some sort to connect us
with his murder.’
‘Alas!’ she answered. ‘You little know my heart, sir. You little know
the truth!’
‘It is natural you should do so; it is very probable you may, without
being conscious of it,’ said Mr Haredale, speaking more to himself than
her. ‘We are a fallen house. Money, dispensed with the most lavish
hand, would be a poor recompense for sufferings like yours; and thinly
scattered by hands so pinched and tied as ours, it becomes a miserable
mockery. I feel it so, God knows,’ he added, hastily. ‘Why should I
wonder if she does!’
‘You do me wrong, dear sir, indeed,’ she rejoined with great
earnestness; ‘and yet when you come to hear what I desire your leave to
say--’
‘I shall find my doubts confirmed?’ he said, observing that she faltered
and became confused. ‘Well!’
He quickened his pace for a few steps, but fell back again to her side,
and said:
‘And have you come all this way at last, solely to speak to me?’
She answered, ‘Yes.’
‘A curse,’ he muttered, ‘upon the wretched state of us proud beggars,
from whom the poor and rich are equally at a distance; the one being
forced to treat us with a show of cold respect; the other condescending
to us in their every deed and word, and keeping more aloof, the nearer
they approach us.--Why, if it were pain to you (as it must have been)
to break for this slight purpose the chain of habit forged through
two-and-twenty years, could you not let me know your wish, and beg me to
come to you?’
‘There was not time, sir,’ she rejoined. ‘I took my resolution but
last night, and taking it, felt that I must not lose a day--a day! an
hour--in having speech with you.’
They had by this time reached the house. Mr Haredale paused for a
moment, and looked at her as if surprised by the energy of her manner.
Observing, however, that she took no heed of him, but glanced up,
shuddering, at the old walls with which such horrors were connected in
her mind, he led her by a private stair into his library, where Emma was
seated in a window, reading.
The young lady, seeing who approached, hastily rose and laid aside her
book, and with many kind words, and not without tears, gave her a warm
and earnest welcome. But the widow shrunk from her embrace as though she
feared her, and sunk down trembling on a chair.
‘It is the return to this place after so long an absence,’ said Emma
gently. ‘Pray ring, dear uncle--or stay--Barnaby will run himself and
ask for wine--’
‘Not for the world,’ she cried. ‘It would have another taste--I could
not touch it. I want but a minute’s rest. Nothing but that.’
Miss Haredale stood beside her chair, regarding her with silent pity.
She remained for a little time quite still; then rose and turned to Mr
Haredale, who had sat down in his easy chair, and was contemplating her
with fixed attention.
The tale connected with the mansion borne in mind, it seemed, as has
been already said, the chosen theatre for such a deed as it had known.
The room in which this group were now assembled--hard by the very
chamber where the act was done--dull, dark, and sombre; heavy with
worm-eaten books; deadened and shut in by faded hangings, muffling every
sound; shadowed mournfully by trees whose rustling boughs gave ever and
anon a spectral knocking at the glass; wore, beyond all others in
the house, a ghostly, gloomy air. Nor were the group assembled there,
unfitting tenants of the spot. The widow, with her marked and startling
face and downcast eyes; Mr Haredale stern and despondent ever; his niece
beside him, like, yet most unlike, the picture of her father, which
gazed reproachfully down upon them from the blackened wall; Barnaby,
with his vacant look and restless eye; were all in keeping with the
place, and actors in the legend. Nay, the very raven, who had hopped
upon the table and with the air of some old necromancer appeared to be
profoundly studying a great folio volume that lay open on a desk, was
strictly in unison with the rest, and looked like the embodied spirit of
evil biding his time of mischief.
‘I scarcely know,’ said the widow, breaking silence, ‘how to begin. You
will think my mind disordered.’
‘The whole tenor of your quiet and reproachless life since you were last
here,’ returned Mr Haredale, mildly, ‘shall bear witness for you. Why do
you fear to awaken such a suspicion? You do not speak to strangers. You
have not to claim our interest or consideration for the first time. Be
more yourself. Take heart. Any advice or assistance that I can give you,
you know is yours of right, and freely yours.’
‘What if I came, sir,’ she rejoined, ‘I who have but one other friend on
earth, to reject your aid from this moment, and to say that henceforth
I launch myself upon the world, alone and unassisted, to sink or swim as
Heaven may decree!’
‘You would have, if you came to me for such a purpose,’ said Mr Haredale
calmly, ‘some reason to assign for conduct so extraordinary, which--if
one may entertain the possibility of anything so wild and strange--would
have its weight, of course.’
‘That, sir,’ she answered, ‘is the misery of my distress. I can give
no reason whatever. My own bare word is all that I can offer. It is
my duty, my imperative and bounden duty. If I did not discharge it,
I should be a base and guilty wretch. Having said that, my lips are
sealed, and I can say no more.’
As though she felt relieved at having said so much, and had nerved
herself to the remainder of her task, she spoke from this time with a
firmer voice and heightened courage.
‘Heaven is my witness, as my own heart is--and yours, dear young lady,
will speak for me, I know--that I have lived, since that time we all
have bitter reason to remember, in unchanging devotion, and gratitude to
this family. Heaven is my witness that go where I may, I shall preserve
those feelings unimpaired. And it is my witness, too, that they alone
impel me to the course I must take, and from which nothing now shall
turn me, as I hope for mercy.’
‘These are strange riddles,’ said Mr Haredale.
‘In this world, sir,’ she replied, ‘they may, perhaps, never be
explained. In another, the Truth will be discovered in its own good
time. And may that time,’ she added in a low voice, ‘be far distant!’
‘Let me be sure,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘that I understand you, for I am
doubtful of my own senses. Do you mean that you are resolved voluntarily
to deprive yourself of those means of support you have received from us
so long--that you are determined to resign the annuity we settled on you
twenty years ago--to leave house, and home, and goods, and begin life
anew--and this, for some secret reason or monstrous fancy which is
incapable of explanation, which only now exists, and has been dormant
all this time? In the name of God, under what delusion are you
labouring?’
‘As I am deeply thankful,’ she made answer, ‘for the kindness of those,
alive and dead, who have owned this house; and as I would not have its
roof fall down and crush me, or its very walls drip blood, my name being
spoken in their hearing; I never will again subsist upon their bounty,
or let it help me to subsistence. You do not know,’ she added, suddenly,
‘to what uses it may be applied; into what hands it may pass. I do, and
I renounce it.’
‘Surely,’ said Mr Haredale, ‘its uses rest with you.’
‘They did. They rest with me no longer. It may be--it IS--devoted to
purposes that mock the dead in their graves. It never can prosper with
me. It will bring some other heavy judgement on the head of my dear son,
whose innocence will suffer for his mother’s guilt.’
‘What words are these!’ cried Mr Haredale, regarding her with wonder.
‘Among what associates have you fallen? Into what guilt have you ever
been betrayed?’
‘I am guilty, and yet innocent; wrong, yet right; good in intention,
though constrained to shield and aid the bad. Ask me no more questions,
sir; but believe that I am rather to be pitied than condemned. I must
leave my house to-morrow, for while I stay there, it is haunted. My
future dwelling, if I am to live in peace, must be a secret. If my poor
boy should ever stray this way, do not tempt him to disclose it or have
him watched when he returns; for if we are hunted, we must fly again.
And now this load is off my mind, I beseech you--and you, dear Miss
Haredale, too--to trust me if you can, and think of me kindly as you
have been used to do. If I die and cannot tell my secret even then (for
that may come to pass), it will sit the lighter on my breast in that
hour for this day’s work; and on that day, and every day until it comes,
I will pray for and thank you both, and trouble you no more.’
With that, she would have left them, but they detained her, and with
many soothing words and kind entreaties, besought her to consider what
she did, and above all to repose more freely upon them, and say what
weighed so sorely on her mind. Finding her deaf to their persuasions, Mr
Haredale suggested, as a last resource, that she should confide in Emma,
of whom, as a young person and one of her own sex, she might stand in
less dread than of himself. From this proposal, however, she recoiled
with the same indescribable repugnance she had manifested when they met.
The utmost that could be wrung from her was, a promise that she would
receive Mr Haredale at her own house next evening, and in the mean time
reconsider her determination and their dissuasions--though any change on
her part, as she told them, was quite hopeless. This condition made at
last, they reluctantly suffered her to depart, since she would neither
eat nor drink within the house; and she, and Barnaby, and Grip,
accordingly went out as they had come, by the private stair and
garden-gate; seeing and being seen of no one by the way.
It was remarkable in the raven that during the whole interview he
had kept his eye on his book with exactly the air of a very sly human
rascal, who, under the mask of pretending to read hard, was listening to
everything. He still appeared to have the conversation very strongly in
his mind, for although, when they were alone again, he issued orders for
the instant preparation of innumerable kettles for purposes of tea, he
was thoughtful, and rather seemed to do so from an abstract sense of
duty, than with any regard to making himself agreeable, or being what is
commonly called good company.
They were to return by the coach. As there was an interval of full two
hours before it started, and they needed rest and some refreshment,
Barnaby begged hard for a visit to the Maypole. But his mother, who had
no wish to be recognised by any of those who had known her long ago, and
who feared besides that Mr Haredale might, on second thoughts, despatch
some messenger to that place of entertainment in quest of her, proposed
to wait in the churchyard instead. As it was easy for Barnaby to buy
and carry thither such humble viands as they required, he cheerfully
assented, and in the churchyard they sat down to take their frugal
dinner.
Here again, the raven was in a highly reflective state; walking up and
down when he had dined, with an air of elderly complacency which was
strongly suggestive of his having his hands under his coat-tails; and
appearing to read the tombstones with a very critical taste. Sometimes,
after a long inspection of an epitaph, he would strop his beak upon the
grave to which it referred, and cry in his hoarse tones, ‘I’m a devil,
I’m a devil, I’m a devil!’ but whether he addressed his observations to
any supposed person below, or merely threw them off as a general remark,
is matter of uncertainty.
It was a quiet pretty spot, but a sad one for Barnaby’s mother; for Mr
Reuben Haredale lay there, and near the vault in which his ashes rested,
was a stone to the memory of her own husband, with a brief inscription
recording how and when he had lost his life. She sat here, thoughtful
and apart, until their time was out, and the distant horn told that the
coach was coming.
Barnaby, who had been sleeping on the grass, sprung up quickly at the
sound; and Grip, who appeared to understand it equally well, walked
into his basket straightway, entreating society in general (as though
he intended a kind of satire upon them in connection with churchyards)
never to say die on any terms. They were soon on the coach-top and
rolling along the road.
It went round by the Maypole, and stopped at the door. Joe was from
home, and Hugh came sluggishly out to hand up the parcel that it called
for. There was no fear of old John coming out. They could see him from
the coach-roof fast asleep in his cosy bar. It was a part of John’s
character. He made a point of going to sleep at the coach’s time. He
despised gadding about; he looked upon coaches as things that ought
to be indicted; as disturbers of the peace of mankind; as restless,
bustling, busy, horn-blowing contrivances, quite beneath the dignity of
men, and only suited to giddy girls that did nothing but chatter and go
a-shopping. ‘We know nothing about coaches here, sir,’ John would say,
if any unlucky stranger made inquiry touching the offensive vehicles;
‘we don’t book for ‘em; we’d rather not; they’re more trouble than
they’re worth, with their noise and rattle. If you like to wait for ‘em
you can; but we don’t know anything about ‘em; they may call and they
may not--there’s a carrier--he was looked upon as quite good enough for
us, when I was a boy.’
She dropped her veil as Hugh climbed up, and while he hung behind, and
talked to Barnaby in whispers. But neither he nor any other person
spoke to her, or noticed her, or had any curiosity about her; and so, an
alien, she visited and left the village where she had been born, and had
lived a merry child, a comely girl, a happy wife--where she had known
all her enjoyment of life, and had entered on its hardest sorrows.