ELLEN REGAINS HER LIBERTY.
Stephen Whitelaw lingered for two days and two nights, and at the
expiration of that time departed this life, making a very decent end of
it, and troubled by no thought that his existence had been an unworthy
one.
Before he died, he told his wife something of how he had been tempted
into the doing of that foul deed whereof Marian Saltram had been the
victim. Those two were alone together the day before he died, when
Stephen, of his own free will, made the following statement:----
"It was Mrs. Holbrook's father, you see," he said, in a plausible tone,
"that put it to me, how he might want his daughter taken care of for a
time--it might be a short time, or it might be rather a longish time,
according to how circumstances should work out. We'd met once before at
the King's Arms at Malsham, where Mr. Nowell was staying, and where I
went in of an evening, once in a way, after market; and he'd made pretty
free with me, and asked me a good many questions about myself, and told
me a good bit about himself, in a friendly way. He told me how his
daughter had gone against him, and was likely to go against him, and how
some property that ought in common justice to have been left to him, had
been left to her. He was going to give her a fair chance, he said, if she
liked to leave her husband, who was a scheming scoundrel, and obey him.
She might have a happy home with him, if she was reasonable. If not, he
should use his authority as a father.
"He came to see me at Wyncomb next day--dropped in unawares like, when
mother Tadman was out of the way--not that I had asked him, you see. He
seemed to be quite taken with the place, and made me show him all over
the house; and then he took a glass of something, and sat and talked a
bit, and went away, without having said a word about his daughter. But
before he went he made me promise that I'd go and see him at the King's
Arms that night.
"Well, you see, Nell, as he seemed to have taken a fancy to me, as you
may say, and had told me he could put me up to making more of my money,
and had altogether been uncommonly pleasant, I didn't care to say no, and
I went. I was rather taken aback at the King's Arms when they showed me
to a private room, because I'd met Mr. Nowell before in the Commercial;
however, there he was, sitting in front of a blazing fire, and with a
couple of decanters of wine upon the table.
"He was very civil, couldn't have been more friendly, and we talked and
talked; he was always harping on his daughter; till at last he came out
with what he wanted. Would I give her house-room for a bit, just to keep
her out of the way of her husband and such-like designing people,
supposing she should turn obstinate and refuse to go abroad with him?
'You've a rare old roomy place,' he said. 'I saw some rooms upstairs at
the end of a long passage which don't seem to have been used for years.
You might keep my lady in one of those; and that fine husband of hers
would be as puzzled where to find her as if she was in the centre of
Africa. It would be a very easy thing to do,' he said; 'and it would be
only friendly in you to do it.'"
"O, Stephen!" cried his wife reproachfully, "how could you ever consent
to such a wicked thing?"
"I don't know about the wickedness of it," Mr. Whitelaw responded, with
rather a sullen air; "a daughter is bound to obey her father, isn't she?
and if she don't, I should think he had the power to do what he liked
with her. That's how I should look at it, if I was a father. It's all
very well to talk, you see, Nell, but you don't know the arguments such a
man as that can bring to bear. I didn't want to do it; I was against it
from the first. It was a dangerous business, and might bring me into
trouble. But that man bore down upon me to that extent that he made me
promise anything; and when I went home that night, it was with the
understanding that I was to fit up a room--there was a double door to be
put up to shut out sound, and a deal more--ready for Mrs. Holbrook, in
case her father wanted to get her out of the way for a bit."
"He promised to pay you, of course?" Ellen said, not quite able to
conceal the contempt and aversion which this confession of her husband's
inspired.
"Well, yes, a man doesn't put himself in jeopardy like that for nothing.
He was to give me a certain sum of money down the first night that Mrs.
Holbrook slept in my house; and another sum of money before he went to
America, and an annual sum for continuing to take care of her, if he
wanted to keep her quiet permanently, as he might. Altogether it would be
a very profitable business, he told me, and I ought to consider myself
uncommonly lucky to get such a chance. As to the kindness or unkindness
of the matter, it was better than shutting her up in a lunatic asylum, he
said; and he might have to do that, if I refused to take her. She was
very weak in her head, he said, and the doctors would throw no difficulty
in his way, if he wanted to put her into a madhouse."
"But you must have known that was a lie!" exclaimed Ellen indignantly.
"You had seen and talked to her; you must have known that Mrs. Holbrook
was as sane as you or I."
"I couldn't be supposed to know better than her own father," answered Mr.
Whitelaw, in an injured tone; "he had a right to know best. However, it's
no use arguing about it now. He had such a power over me that I couldn't
go against him; so I gave in, and Mrs. Holbrook came to Wyncomb. She was
to be treated kindly and made comfortable, her father said; that was
agreed between us; and she has been treated kindly and made comfortable.
I had to trust some one to wait upon her, and when Mr. Nowell saw the two
girls he chose Sarah Batts. 'That girl will do anything for money,' he
said; 'she's stupid, but she's wise enough to know her own interest, and
she'll hold her tongue.' So I trusted Sarah Batts, and I had to pay her
pretty stiffly to keep the secret; but she was a rare one to do the work,
and she went about it as quiet as a mouse. Not even mother Tadman ever
suspected her."
"It was a wicked piece of business--wicked from first to last," said
Ellen. "I can't bear to hear about it."
And then, remembering that the sinner was so near his end, and that this
voluntary confession of his was in some manner a sign of repentance, she
felt some compunction, and spoke to him in a softer tone.
"Still I'm grateful to you for telling me the truth at last, Stephen,"
she said; "and, thank God, there's no harm done that need last for ever.
Thank God that dear young lady did not lose her life, shut up a prisoner
in that miserable room, as she might have done."
"She had her victuals regular," observed Mr. Whitelaw, "and the best."
"Eating and drinking won't keep any one alive, if their heart's
breaking," said Ellen; "but, thank heaven, her sufferings have come to an
end now, and I trust God will forgive your share in them, Stephen."
And then, sitting by his bedside through the long hours of that night,
she tried in very simple words to awaken him to a sense of his condition.
It was not an easy business to let any glimmer of spiritual light in upon
the darkness of that sordid mind. There did arise perhaps in this last
extremity some dim sense of remorse in the breast of Mr. Whitelaw, some
vague consciousness that in that one act of his life, and in the whole
tenor of his life, he had not exactly shaped his conduct according to
that model which the parson had held up for his imitation in certain
rather prosy sermons, indifferently heard, on the rare occasions of his
attendance at the parish church. But whatever terrors the world to come
might hold for him seemed very faint and shapeless, compared with the
things from which he was to be taken. He thought of his untimely death as
a hardship, an injustice almost. When his wife entreated him to see the
vicar of Crosber before he died, he refused at first, asking what good
the vicar's talk could do him.
"If he could keep me alive as long as till next July, to see how those
turnips answer with the new dressing, I'd see him fast enough," he said
peevishly; "but he can't; and I don't want to hear his preaching."
"But it would be a comfort to you, surely, Stephen, to have him talk to
you a little about the goodness and mercy of God. He won't tell you hard
things, I'm sure of that."
"No, I suppose he'll try and make believe that death's uncommon
pleasant," answered Mr. Whitelaw with a bitter laugh; "as if it could be
pleasant to any man to leave such a place as Wyncomb, after doing as much
for the land, and spending as much labour and money upon it, as I have
done. It's like nurses telling children that a dose of physic's pleasant;
they wouldn't like to have to take it themselves."
And then by-and-by, when his last day had dawned, and he felt himself
growing weaker, Mr. Whitelaw expressed himself willing to comply with his
wife's request.
"If it's any satisfaction to you, Nell, I'll see the parson," he said.
"His talk can't do me much harm, anyhow." Whereupon the rector of Crosber
and Hallibury was sent for, and came swiftly to perform his duty to the
dying man. He was closeted with Mr. Whitelaw for some time, and did his
best to awaken Christian feelings in the farmer's breast; but it was
doubtful if his pious efforts resulted in much. The soul of Stephen
Whitelaw was in his barns and granaries, with his pigs and cattle. He
could not so much as conceive the idea of a world in which there should
be no such thing as sale and profit.
His end came quietly enough at last, and Ellen was free. Her time of
bondage had been very brief, yet she felt herself twenty years older than
she had seemed before that interval of misery began.
When the will was read by Mr. Pivott on the day of Stephen Whitelaw's
funeral, it was found that the farmer had left his wife two hundred a
year, derivable from real estate. To Mrs. Rebecca Tadman, his cousin, he
bequeathed an annuity of forty pounds, the said annuity to revert to
Ellen upon Mrs. Tadman's death should Ellen survive. The remaining
portion of his real estate he bequeathed to one John James Harris, a
distant cousin, who owned a farm in Wiltshire, with whom Stephen Whitelaw
had spent some years of his boyhood, and from whom he had learned the
science of agriculture. It was less from any love the testator bore John
James Harris than from a morbid jealousy of his probable successor Frank
Randall, that the Wiltshire farmer had been named as residuary legatee.
If Stephen Whitelaw could have left his real estate to the Infirmary, he
would have so left it. His personal estate, consisting of divers
investments in railway shares and other kinds of stock, all of a very
safe kind, was to be realized, and the entire proceeds devoted to the
erection of an additional wing for the extension of Malsham Infirmary,
and his gift was to be recorded on a stone tablet in a conspicuous
position on the front of that building. This, which was an absolute
condition attached to the bequest, had been set forth with great
minuteness by the lawyer, at the special desire of his client.
Mr. Carley's expression of opinion after hearing this will read need not
be recorded here. It was forcible, to say the least of it; and Mr.
Pivott, the Malsham solicitor, protested against such language as an
outrage upon the finer feelings of our nature.
"Some degree of disappointment is perhaps excusable upon your part, my
dear sir," said the lawyer, who wished to keep the widow for his client,
and had therefore no desire to offend her father; "but I am sure that in
your calmer moments you will admit that the work to which your son-in-law
has devoted the bulk of his accumulations is a noble one. For ages to
come the sick and the suffering among our townsfolk will bless the name
of Whitelaw. There is a touching reflection for you, Mr. Carley! And
really now, your amiable daughter, with an income of two hundred per
annum--to say nothing of that reversion which must fall in to her
by-and-by on Mrs. Tadman's decease--is left in a very fair position. I
should not have consented to draw up that will, sir, if I had considered
it an unjust one."
"Then there's a wide difference between your notion of justice and mine,"
growled the bailiff; who thereupon relapsed into grim silence, feeling
that complaint was useless. He could no more alter the conditions of Mr.
Whitelaw's will than he could bring Mr. Whitelaw back to life--and that
last operation was one which he was by no means eager to perform.
Ellen herself felt no disappointment; she fancied, indeed, that her
husband, whom she had never deceived by any pretence of affection, had
behaved with sufficient generosity towards her. Two hundred a year seemed
a large income to her. It would give her perfect independence, and the
power to help others, if need were.