THE SHEEP-FARMER AND HIS WIFE.
I left the rock which had sheltered me, and went in search of Cora,
resolved at once to expose the perfidy so cruelly enforced upon me. I
found her sitting drearily beneath the larches. At my approach she
lifted her head with a look of sullen apprehension, as if she dreaded
further importunity. I was terribly excited, and breathless, and
doubtless pale. It was impossible for me to begin my painful subject
with delicacy or caution.
“Cora,” I said, “Cora, I have seen him—he is a wretch—he is infamous!”
“Seen him!—seen him! when? where?” she cried, looking wildly around.
“Yonder,” said I, almost lifting her from the earth and dragging her
forward to a point from whence the boat could be seen close by the
opposite shore; “yonder he goes; I have been pleading with him in your
behalf. I besought him not to leave you with this terrible reproach on
your name.”
“Well, well,” she gasped.
“He refused—he spoke of you as a person whom he could not respect.”
“No—no! not that! not that!” she almost shrieked, clenching her hands
together.
“Worse, Cora, worse—he dared to offer his love to me—his vile,
traitorous love. Before this he has done the same thing; but now it was
more direct, more passionate. He offered to brave Lady Catherine, and
break all ties for my sake, this very day.”
I paused in this headlong speech; my words had turned her to marble. She
stood thus white and rigid for a moment, then, like a statue hurled from
its support fell prone upon the earth; her face downward and clutching
the turf with both hands.
I shrieked and fell back from her in dismay, startled by the suddenness
of her fall.
She remained still, and but for a faint quivering of her fingers in the
grass, I should have believed that she had dropped down dead.
“Cora!” I cried, “Cora, my poor Cora, are you hurt?”
I bent down and attempted to lift her from the earth, but she shrunk
from me moaning and shuddering. This repulse was not enough, I wound my
arm around her and covered her golden hair with my kisses.
“Don’t—don’t, your kisses sting me! I would rather have vipers creeping
through my hair!”
Wounded by her words, I desisted and drew back. After a little she
moved, and I saw her face. It was pallid and stony; her eyes were heavy,
and a violet tinge lay beneath them. A look of touching grief impressed
that child-like mouth, which began to quiver as her eyes met mine.
“What?—what have I done, Cora?” was my tearful question, for the anguish
in those sweet eyes filled me with unutterable dismay.
“I heard all that you said—all, every word!” she answered, laying her
head helplessly down on the grass again. “Every word, Zana! You never
told me a falsehood in your life, but I must not believe this; it would
kill me here, at your feet.”
My heart sunk. She knew how worthless he was now, when knowledge was
despair. We had been rivals before she became a victim, that she knew
also. No wonder she shuddered when I touched her—no wonder those sweet
features were pallid, and those white fingers sought to work off the
agony of her soul by tearing the senseless turf.
“Cora,” I said, full of the most tender compassion, “I have done you no
wrong, and never will. Since the day I was sure that you loved him, I
have never willingly been in his presence. Is this no sacrifice, Cora?”
“Then you did love him once?” she said, looking up, as if surprised. “No
wonder, who could help it. But he, Zana, Zana, it kills me to think of
that—he _loves you_; and I—I, O my God—my God, what have I done?”
She began to cry, and for a time her form was convulsed with tears. I,
too, wept, for the same hand had stricken us both. When this storm of
sorrow had passed, she lay quite passive and inert upon the grass, a
single tear now and then forcing itself through her thick lashes, and a
quiver stirring her lips as we witness in a grieved child.
During some minutes we remained thus, when she arose and began to
arrange her hair, sitting on the ground, but her hands trembled, and the
tresses fell away from them. I sat down by her and smoothed the heavy
masses with my hand. She leaned toward me, sobbing.
“It does not feel like a viper, now, Cora!” I whispered.
She threw herself into my arms.
“Oh, Zana, Zana, what shall I do? What will become of me?”
I folded her in my arms, and kissed the quivering whiteness of her
forehead, till it became smooth again.
“Come with me, love—come to the good father who is pining to death for a
sight of his darling.”
“Yes, I will go, Zana. I will never see _him_ again—never, never. Oh,
God help me—never!”
I could not avoid a throb of selfish joy as she said this; but grateful
and relieved folded her closer in my arms.
“Come now,” she said, struggling to her feet; “take me away. Let him go
to the house and find the room empty, perhaps—perhaps that will make him
feel.”
She began to weep afresh, and fearing that she would sink to the earth
again, I cast my arm around her. “Let me help support you, Cora.”
“Yes, yes, for I am a feeble creature, Zana, but stronger in some points
than you think!”
We moved on through the larch groves, uttering broken sentences like
these, half tears, half exclamations, till a sudden curve brought us
close to Chaleco. His sylvan meal was ready, but neither of us could
partake a morsel of it. With natural tact he did not urge us, but
observed everything, doubtless making his own comments. We entered the
boat, and without asking a question the gipsy rowed us toward the
opposite shore.
We ascended to the house, and conducted Cora at once to her room. All
she asked was darkness and solitude. I had seen her on the bed, passive
and worn out with the storm of sorrow that had swept over her. Chaleco
joined me in the next room.
“Let her sleep if she can,” he said; “you and I must go in yonder; we
have some questions to ask of the old people.”
Chaleco took me to the kitchen. An old woman was on the hearth, spinning
flax; and at a back door where the sun lay warmly, sat a stout old man
smoking. I had not seen, or more probably not observed this couple
before, but now they struck me as familiar, like persons lost sight of
from childhood. Chaleco went out and sat down by the old man, while I
drew toward the woman, and asked some questions regarding her work. She
gave a little start, looked up, and evidently disappointed, began
fumbling in her pocket for a pair of horn spectacles, which were eagerly
placed across her nose.
Never did I undergo a perusal of the face like that. It seemed to me
that the grey eyes under those glasses grew keen and large as they
gazed. At length she started up, breaking the thread from her distaff,
and hurried toward the back door with every appearance of affright.
“Guidman—guidman, coom here,” she said, “coom and see the young gipsy
leddy! As God is above all, she is here, body and soul!”
“Gang awa, woman, these new fangled barnacles are deceiving things. Ye
dinna see as ye did,” answered the old man, deliberately knocking the
ashes from his pipe, by tapping the bowl on his thumb nail.
“Well, then, look for yoursel, guidman,” said the dame, taking me by the
shoulders, and half pushing me toward the door.
When the old man’s eyes fell on my person he stood up and dropped his
bonnet.
“A weel, a weel!” he exclaimed, “wonders will never cease; na dout it’s
the leddy hersel with hardly a year on her heed sin she went, years
sine, with the bairn in her arms.” Then turning to Chaleco, he said, “Ye
wer speerin about the stranger leddy; there she stans.”
“But the lady you speak of would have been older than this,” said
Chaleco.
“It’s just the truth,” answered the Scotchman, sinking on his bench,
“seventeen years wad na ha left her sa bonny, whil mysel an the guid
wife ha sunk fra hale, middle-aged folk inta owld grey carlins—but then
wha may the lassie be?”
“You spoke of a child!”
“Aye, gude faith, it’s the bairn grown to be what the mither was. Weel,
weel, time maun ha it’s ain—but wha may be the ladie hersel? A-whow is
it sae, an she sa bonny?”
“You remember her well then?” persisted Chaleco.
“Mind her, wherefore no what sud gin me forget her, or her gowden haired
guidman, a bonnier pair n’er staid in shoon. It wad be na easy matter to
forget them, I tell ye!”
“Then they were married?”
“Wha iver cud doubt it, and their bairn born here?” cried the staunch
old man, proudly; “d’ye think we harbor lemans? There was guid reason
why it sud na be clash’d about; na doot the Earl of Clare was na ane to
put shame on an honest man’s name.”
“Then he told you that he was married to the lady?”
“Tell me, yes; wha but himself sud tell me?”
“And you will swear to this?” questioned Chaleco, allowing none of the
eagerness that burned in his eyes to affect his voice.
“Swear, d’ye think I wad say at any time in my life what I wad na swear
till?”
“And the lady—what did you call her name?”
“Aurora; it’s a strange name, but my lard said it had a fine meanin,
something about the dawn o’ the day.”
“Yes—yes, it was a pretty name—but when together how did they seem? Was
he in the habit of calling her his wife? Did she call him husband?”
“Aye—aye, baith him an her; she, puir thing, took great delight i’ the
name.”
“Then you knew this man to be Lord Clare? Had you seen him often
before?”
“Seen him? wha else learned him to shoot o’ the hills and fish i’ the
loch yonder?”
“And you would know this girl by your memory of her mother?”
“Sud I ken the lassie by mother’s look, d’ye speer?—sud I ken my ain
bairn, think ye? The twa are as like as twa pease—the same blink o’ the
ee—hair like the wing o’ the raven—a step like the mountain deer.
Aye—aye, I ken her weel.”
I drew near to the old man, impatient to learn more of my parents, and
was about to interrupt him with questions; but Chaleco promptly repelled
me with a motion of the hand, giving a warning look which I dared not
disregard.
Too much excited for a passive listener, I left them and entered Cora’s
sitting room. This little chamber had a double interest to me now. It
was doubtless the place of my birth. The furniture and ornaments so
superior to the dwelling itself had been my mother’s. I stood by the
window looking upon the lake which had filled her vision so many times.
Sad thoughts crowded upon me as I walked to and fro in the room,
determined not to interrupt Chaleco with my impatience, and yet panting
to hear all those old people had to say of my parents. Directly Chaleco
and the old people came in, and once more the closet containing those
precious books was searched. A few letters from Lord Clare to my mother,
were found; Chaleco seized them eagerly, and sat down to compare them
with my mother’s journal, which he had never restored to me.