The Meeting at Mill-bank.—The Knife.—Ada’s Fate Hangs on a Thread.—The
Bold Plunge.
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Britton, as Sir Frederick Hamilton halted
on the parapet. “Speak, Maud, or by hell I’ll throw you in the river!”
“What do I mean, Andrew Britton!” replied Maud; “I mean pain and death
here and torture everlasting in a world to come for you. Ay, for you,
Andrew Britton—you cannot kill Maud. The Almighty has written our names
in the book of mortality—but yours comes first. Yes, yours comes first,
Andrew Britton!”
“Idiot!” muttered Britton. “Tell me at once—did you bring that
Hartleton to the Chequers?”
“Hartleton!—Hartleton?” repeated Maud. “Oh, he was one of the spirits I
knew long ago, before I dropped from among the stars.”
“Answer my question!” cried Britton, fiercely, “did you bring Hartleton
to the Chequers?”
“Answer my question, Britton,” said Maud, “if your sealed black heart
will let you. Why does not my husband come to his bride?”
“What do you mean?”
“We waited for him, but he came not; then they whispered he was
dead—yes, dead, and I asked Heaven who had killed him, when a voice
whispered—Andrew Britton!”
“Peace,” cried Britton. “You are mad.”
“Yes, mad—mad,” said Maud; “but not so mad as Andrew Britton, for he
has murdered—murdered the innocent. There’s blood on your hands!”
Britton started and involuntarily glanced at his hands.
“Ay blood—blood,” cried Maud; “you may wash away the outward stain, but
then it clings to your heart; and when you are asked at the last if you
are guiltless or not of shedding man’s blood, you will hold up your
hand, and it will drip with gore!”
“Beldame, peace!” cried Britton. “You tempt me to do a deed before the
time I intended. Hear me, Maud; you have but a chance now for your
life. Answer me what I shall ask of you truly and I may spare you.
Refuse, or tamper with my temper in any way, and yon river receives you
in its black and rolling tide. We are alone; there is no one to hear a
cry, and I will take care you shall have breath but for one. No one is
at hand to aid—I have you at my mercy.”
“Your mercy, Andrew Britton?” said Maud. “Oh! Profane not the word.
When did you show mercy? Savage—the spirit of God is above and around
us. The fiat has gone forth, and Heaven has said, thus far shalt thou
go and no further—but your questions?—Your questions? I will hear your
questions, although I am a widow.”
“What paper is that you have?”
“Paper?”
“Yes; you have a paper with something written on it.”
“Well?”
“Give it to me or you die.”
“An angel gave it me. I dream of her now sometimes when my sleep is
blessed and happy.”
“’Tis not for you, Andrew Britton. It belongs to the angel. I must only
show it, and that not to you. No—no—not to you with your blood-stained
hands.”
Britton was silent for a moment. He was hesitating whether by violence,
at once, to tear the paper from the poor wandering creature, or
endeavour first to procure such other information as he expected she
possessed. He decided on the latter course, as violence could be
resorted to at any moment.
“Maud,” he said, “when did we meet last?”
“In a crowd,” she replied. “I recollect there were many men, but none
so bad as Andrew Britton. They held up their hands, the one after the
other, and none had blood upon them save his alone.”
“What brought you there? Tell me, or this moment is your last!”
“How far is it to the Old Smithy?” said Maud, as if she had not heard
or understood his question.
“Curses!” muttered Britton, whose passion and fear together had tended
to sober him; “is she mad, or cunning?”
“The Old Smithy, where the murder was done, I mean,” added Maud.
“I’ll tell you,” said Britton, in a tone that he intended should be
artful and temporising, “if you will answer me what I ask and give me
the paper you have?”
“Britton, where’s the child?” said Maud. “How came you to spare the
child? Did it lift its little hands in prayer to you? And was there one
spot in your heart that shuddered at the deed of blood? Did conscience
for once stay your arm? Or did Heaven interpose, and strike you
powerless, when you would have slaughtered the babe? Tell me that,
Britton. Where have you put the child?—Where is Dame Tatton?—Speak,
Andrew Britton! I have travelled many, many miles to seek you. You
killed him who loved me,—nay, scowl not, your brows are darker than the
night, and I see them frowning on me. Oh! There is nothing in nature so
dark and terrible as thy heart, Andrew Britton. Even at midnight, when
people call it dark, and say you cannot see your hand, the smile of
heaven still lingers on the world, and there is the faint light of its
love still beaming through the mists of night! Andrew Britton, give me
the child, and I will teach it to pray for you to Heaven. Oh, give it
to me! It must be cold and weary. Give it to me, Britton, and then hope
to be forgiven!”
“I have no child,” said Britton; “you know that years have passed, and
the child who was brought by—by—a man from the burning smithy, must be
now a child no longer.”
“You would deceive poor Mad Maud, because she hunts you—ay, to the
death, hunts you. You cannot escape me, Britton—you are d—d!”
“D—d! How—what mean you?”
“I am to see you die.”
“Pshaw! Tell me now, Maud, didst ever see the man again who rushed
forth bleeding, with the child, from the Old Smithy.”
“What man was that?”
“Didst ever hear the name of Gray?”
“Gray! Gray! The angel asked me that.”
“Ha!”
“Yes—yes—Gray. Who is Gray?”
“You could take me to the angel,” said Britton, in soothing accents.
Maud laughed hysterically, and pointed to the sky, as she said,—“Take
you! Take you! With the weight of so much blood upon you! No, no. Were
you lighter you could go, Andrew Britton. What did my husband say when
you killed him? What was his last word? You could not forget it. It
must be scorched on your heart. Tell it to me, Andrew Britton.”
“You rave,” said Britton; “do you know that Frank Hartleton, who used
to live at Learmont, has become a magistrate?”
“Do you know,” cried Maud, “that there’s blood wherever Andrew Britton
goes? If the soft dew of Heaven falls upon him, it turns to gore—he
dips his hands into a pure streamlet, and the limpid waters turn to
blood—his drink is blood, when it touches his lips—spots of thick
clotted gore fall on him wheresoever he goes—it is the ancient curse of
the Egyptians that is upon him! Ha! Ha! Ha! Blood—blood, Andrew
Britton!—Blood!”
“Devil!” muttered Britton.
“I will haunt you!” continued Maud—“I will shout after you as you
go—There steps a murderer! I will proclaim your calling to all—’tis one
of deep iniquity—you are branded by the mark of Cain—you have sinned
before Heaven in taking the life which thou could’st not restore or
even comprehend! Wretched—scared—cursed Andrew Britton! I will be with
you when you lie writhing in your last agony—when you try to pray, I
will clap my hands and shout ‘The Smithy!’ in your ears. When you gasp
for water to quench the fever that shall then be consuming your heart,
I will answer you by ‘The Smithy!’ When you shriek to Heaven in your
dark despair, I will answer you shriek for shriek, and the words of my
vengeance shall be ‘The Old Smithy!’ Ha! Ha! Ha!—The murder at the Old
Smithy! When the day comes, that the graves give up their dead, then
will appear a sight to blast you from the Old Smithy! ’Tis hidden now;
but the earth will crack, and with a hideous likeness of what it once
was, the form of your victim will pursue you to accuse you before the
judgment-seat of God! Then—then you will shriek—yell for mercy!—You,
who showed none,—and the blue sky shall open to let you go
down—down!—Encircled in the loathsome embrace of slimy awful things,
that will lick your shivering form with tongues of flame!”
“Peace, wretch,” cried Britton.
At the same moment he lifted his arm, and in his hand gleamed a knife.
“Hold!” cried Maud, “you dare not!”
Sir Frederick Hartleton raised his hand. Britton slowly dropped his
murdering arm.
“Woman,” he said, “do you wish for death, that you tempt me thus to
kill you?”
There was a trembling fear in Britton’s voice that re-assured Sir
Frederick; and, congratulating himself that the sudden movement he had,
on the impulse of the moment, made, had escaped observation, he again
lay perfectly quiet, but prepared to aid poor Maud upon an emergency.
“Maud,” said Britton, after a pause, “give me the paper you have! And
leave London.”
“Leave you,” said Maud, “I dare not; I have a duty to do,—it is to
follow you. Wherever you go, Andrew Britton, there will you find me.
No, no! I cannot leave you; I sometimes think I am dead, and that there
is my spirit haunting you.”
“We shall see,” muttered Britton; “spirits have never troubled me yet.
The paper, I say!—The paper that you set such store by! I must and will
have it.”
“Never!”
“Then take the consequences.”
He again raised his knife, and was in the very act of bringing it down
to plunge it into the breast of the hapless creature, when his eyes
fell upon the form of Sir Frederick Hartleton, who rose up on the
parapet between him and the water.
This sudden appearance, rising apparently from out of the river, had
all the effect which Sir Frederick expected it would. Britton, for the
first time in his life, was affected by superstition. He could, on the
spur of the moment, imagine the tall dusky form that thus rose before
his very eyes, and, as it were, from the bosom of the Thames, to be no
other than some supernatural being interposing between him and his
victim.
He started back in horror, then, dropping the knife, he rushed
precipitately from the spot.
Maud burst into a wild laugh, and before Sir Frederick Hartleton could
speak a word to detain her, she fled in a contrary direction to that
which Britton had taken, with great speed.
Hastily springing over the wall, Sir Frederick, as well as he was able
by the dim light, pursued the flying woman, his object being the same
as Britton’s, namely, to possess himself of the paper in Maud’s
possession, and which, he doubted not, was in some way near or remotely
connected with the chain of mysteries that enveloped the crimes of
Squire Learmont and his associates in guilt, the savage smith and the
man named as Gray.
Now and then he could see the flutter of her garments as she rushed
along by the wall; and as often as he did, he redoubled his speed with
the hope of overtaking, while she was compelled, from the nature of the
ground, to go forward in nearly a straight line; for he well knew that
after passing the river wall, which did not extend much further from
the broken nature of the open country, and several hedges and
plantations that were close at hand, he might be completely foiled till
daylight in his attempt to follow the poor creature, who most probably
fancied she was flying from Britton.
“Maud! Maud!” cried Sir Frederick Hartleton, with the hope that she
would recognise that his voice was not that of the savage smith.
His call, however, seemed to alarm her still more, and, in fact,
notwithstanding her wild and superstitious confidence in the
probability of her outliving the smith, the fear of death from his
ruffianly hands had come strongly upon her, and she fled, shrieking
from the magistrate, with the full confidence that Britton was pursuing
her, armed with the knife she had seen gleaming for an instant above
her devoted head. Her fleetness astonished Sir Frederick Hartleton, for
swift runner as he was, he could not come up with her.
“Maud!” he cried again, and the poor creature answered him by a scream,
which at once convinced him that he inspired her with terror, rather
than confidence, by calling after her. He therefore abstained from
doing so, and began evidently to gain upon her just as she neared the
part of the river’s bank where the low wall terminated.
Now she looked back and screamed again, as she saw his figure dashing
onwards through the gloom.
“I am a friend!” cried Sir Frederick Hartleton, but his voice was weak
from the violence, from which he had been pursuing Mad Maud, and she
heard him not.
Now she reached the end of the wall, and looked round again.—A cry
announced her terror, and she turned toward the river instead of the
land.
There was a heavy splash, and as he heard it, the awful conviction came
across the mind of the magistrate, that the unhappy creature had thrown
herself into the Thames to escape him.
He gained the spot in an instant. A lighter stood moored close to the
bank. With a tremendous spring Sir Frederick gained the deck, and
leaning anxiously over the side, he gazed earnestly into the stream as
it rippled by. A stifled cry met his ears. He looked in the direction
from whence it came, and saw a dark object hurried on by the water.
It was but the act of a moment to dive from the deck of the lighter,
and in the next the athletic Sir Frederick Hartleton touched the bottom
of the Thames.
He was an admirable swimmer, and rising to the surface, just as the
watchmen on the Surrey side began to spring their rattles, and give an
alarm by calling out that some one had fallen in the river.
Some few hundred yards in advance of him, he saw the dark object still
hurrying on. Assisted by the tide, and his own vigorous swimming, he
soon neared it. A few more sweeps of his arms brought him within arm’s
length, and he grasped poor Maud, for it was she, indeed, by her long
raven hair which had escaped from its confinement, and floated in a
dark mass upon the surface of the water.
“Help!” cried Sir Frederick in a clear voice, and turning towards the
Surrey shore, which was now much nearer to him than that from which he
had come.
Several boats had now pushed off, and in one a man stood up with a link
that cast a lurid glare over the stream.
“Hilloa!” cried the man. “Who’s in for a ducking now? Hilloa there.”
“Hilloa!” cried Sir Frederick, and the rowers at once pulled towards
him.
“Back water!” cried the man with the light—“I see him—here ye are.”
The magistrate grasped the side of the boat, and said—
“Now, my lads, take in the woman.”
Maud was lifted into the boat, and Sir Frederick himself clambered
after her.
“Fifty guineas, my brave fellows,” he cried, “if we get to shore in
time to recover this poor creature.”
“Fif—fif—fifty?” ejaculated the man with the light.
“Yes—fifty guineas.”
“Pull, you devils!” he shrieked out to the rowers. “Pull—pull.”
The men bent all their energies to the task, and in less than three
minutes more the keel of the boat grated on the shore.
Wet and cold as he was, Sir Frederick Hartleton seized the inanimate
and light form of Maud, as if she had been an infant, and springing
from the boat, he ran to a public-house called “The King’s Bounty,”
that was celebrated at the time and declaring who he was, had poor Maud
immediately properly attended to, while he himself ran to a surgeon,
and procured his instant services to restore her if possible to
consciousness.