THE MOTHER.
The afternoon of the day on which poor Bampfylde died was bright and
fine, one of those beautiful October days which are more lovely in their
wistful brightness, more touching, than any other period of the
year--Summer still lingering, the smile on her lip and the tear in her
eye, dressed out in borrowed splendour, her own fair garniture of
flowers and greenery worn out, but wearing her Indian mantle with a
tender grace, subdued and sweet. The late mignonette over-blown, yet
fragrant, was sweet in the little village gardens, underneath the pale
China roses that still kept up a little glow of blossom. Something had
excited the village; the people were at their doors, and gathered in
groups about. Miss Price, the dressmaker, held a little court. There was
evidently something to tell, something to talk over more than was usual.
The few passengers who were about stayed to hear, and each little knot
of people which had managed to secure a new listener was happy. They
were all in full tide of talk, commenting upon and discussing some
occurrence with a certain hush, at the same time, of awe about them,
which showed that the news was not of a joyful character--when some one
came down through the village whose appearance raised the excitement to
fever point. It was the well-known figure of the old woman in her grey
cloak--so well known up the water and down the water, which thus
suddenly appeared among them--old ’Lizabeth Bampfylde! The gossips
shrank closer together, and gazed at her with eager curiosity all, with
sympathy some. They drew away from her path with a feeling which was
half reverence and half fear. “Does she know--do you think she knows?”
some of them asked; and exclamations of, “Poor old body--poor woman,”
were rife among the kind-hearted; but all under their breath. ’Lizabeth
took no notice of the people in her path; perhaps she did not even see
them. She was warm with her long walk from the fells, and had thrown off
her hood and knotted her red handkerchief over her cap. She went along
thus with the long swing of her still vigorous limbs, stately and
self-absorbed. Whatever she knew, her mind was too much occupied to take
any notice of the people in her way. She had walked far, and she had far
to walk still. She went on steadily through the midst of them without a
pause, looking neither to the right nor the left. There was a tragic
directness in the very way she moved, going straight as a bird flies, at
least as straight as the houses permitted, minding no windings of the
road. The people in front of her stood back and whispered; the people
behind closed upon her path. Did she know? Would she have had the
fortitude to come walking down here all this long way had she known? Was
she going to Stanton, where _they_ were? Last of all, timidly, the
people said among themselves, “Should not some one tell her?--some one
should speak to her;” but by this time she had passed through the
village, and they all felt with a sensation of relief that it was too
late.
’Lizabeth walked on steadily along the water-side. It was a long way
that she had still before her. She was going all the way down the water
to Sir Henry Stanton’s, as Mrs. Pennithorne had gone the day before. The
walk was nothing to her, and the long silence of it was grateful to her
mind. She knew nothing of what had happened on the other side of the
lake. Up in her little house among the hills, all alone in the strange
cessation of work, the dead leisure which seemed to have fallen upon
her, she had thought of everything till her head and her heart ached
alike. Everything now seemed to have gone wrong. Her daughter dead in
exile, and her daughter’s husband still a banished man, all for the sake
of him who was roaming over the country, a fugitive escaped from her
care. The life of her son Dick had been ruined by the same means. And
now the cycle of misfortune was enlarging. The little boy, who was the
heir of the Musgraves, was lost too, because he had no one to protect
him--Lily’s child; and the other Lily, the little lady whom she felt to
be her own representative as well as Lily’s, who could tell what would
become of her? It seemed to ’Lizabeth that this child was the most
precious of all. All the rest had suffered for the sake of her madman;
but the second Lily, the little princess, who had sprung from her common
stock, nothing must touch. Yet it cannot be said that it was for Lily’s
sake that she made up her mind at last; it was nothing so simple, it was
a combination and complication of many motives. He was gone out of her
hands who had been for years the absorbing occupation of her life. Dick
was after him, it was true; but if Dick failed, how was he to be got
without public help? and that help could not be given until the whole
story was told. Then her own loneliness wrought upon her, and all the
whispers and echoes that circled about the cottage, when he was not
there. Her son, ill-fated companion, the ruin of all who had any
connection with him, absorbed her so much in general, that she had no
time to survey the surroundings and think of all that was, and had been,
and might be. Was it he after all that was the cause of all the
suffering? What did he know of it? The story of Lily and of John
Musgrave was a blank to him. He knew nothing of what they had suffered,
was innocent of it in reality. Had he known, would he not have given
himself up a hundred times rather than the innocent should suffer for
him? Was it he, then, or his mother, who was the cause of all? Several
times, during their long agony, such thoughts had overwhelmed
’Lizabeth’s mind. They had come over her in full force when the children
came to the Castle, and then it was that she had been brought to the
length of revealing her secret to young Lord Stanton. Now everything was
desperate about her; the little boy lost, the madman himself lost; no
telling at any moment what misery and horror might come next. She
thought this over day after day as the time passed, and no news came;
waiting in the great loneliness, with her doors all open, that he might
come in if some new impulse, or some touch of use and wont, should lead
him back, her ears intent to hear every sound; her mind prepared (she
thought) for anything; fresh violence, perhaps violence to himself;
miserable death, terrible discovery. She thought she heard his wild
whoops and cries every time the wind raved among the hills; if a
mountain stream rushed down a little quicker than usual, swollen by the
rain, over its pebbles, she thought it was his hurrying steps. It was
always of him that her thoughts were, not of her other son who was
pursuing the madman all about, subject to the same accidents, and who
might perhaps be his victim instead of his captor. She never thought of
that. But she was driven at last to a supreme resolution. Nobody could
doubt his madness, could think it was a feint put on to escape
punishment, now. And God, who was angry, might be propitiated if at last
she made Him, though unwillingly, this sacrifice, this homage to justice
and truth. This was the idea which finally prevailed in her mind. She
would go and tell her story, and perhaps an angry God would accept, and
restore the wanderer to her. If he were safe, safe even in prison, in
some asylum, it would be better at least than his wild career of madness
among all the dangers of the hills. She had risen in the morning from
her uneasy bed, where she lay half-dressed, always watching, listening
to every sound, with this determination upon her. She would propitiate
God. She would do this thing she ought to have done so long ago. She did
not deny that she ought to have done it, and now certainly she would do
it, and God would be satisfied, and the tide of fate would turn.
All this struggle had not been without leaving traces upon her. Her
ruddy colour, the colour of exposure as well as of health and vigour,
was not altogether gone, but she was more brown than ruddy, and this
partial paleness and the extreme gravity of her countenance added to the
stately aspect she bore. She might have been a peasant-queen, as she
moved along with her steady, long, swinging footstep, able for any
exertion, above fatigue or common weakness. A mile or two more or less,
what did that matter? It did not occur to her to go to Mr. Pennithorne,
though he was nearer, with her story. She went straight to Sir Henry
Stanton. He had a family right to be the avenger of blood. It would be
all the compensation that could be made to the Stantons, as well as a
sacrifice propitiating God. And now that she had made up her mind there
was no detail from which she shrank. ’Lizabeth never remarked the
pitying and wondering looks which were cast upon her. She went on
straight to her end with a sense of the solemnity and importance of her
mission, which perhaps gave her a certain support. It was no light thing
that she was about to do. That there was a certain commotion and
agitation about Elfdale did not strike her in the excited state of her
mind. It was natural that agitation should accompany her wherever she
went. It harmonized with her mood, and seemed to her (unconsciously) a
homage and respectful adhesion of nature to what she was about to do.
The great door was open, the hall empty, the way all clear to the room
in which Sir Henry held his little court of justice. ’Lizabeth had come
by instinct to the great hall door--a woman with such a tragical object
does not steal in behind-backs or enter like one of the unconsidered
poor. She went in unchallenged, seeing nobody except one of the girls,
who peeped out from a door, and retreated again at sight of her.
’Lizabeth saw nothing strange in all this. She went in, more
majestically, more slowly than ever, like a woman in a procession--a
woman marching to the stake. What stake, what burning could be so
terrible? Two of the county police were at the open door; they looked at
her with wondering awe, and let her pass. What could any one say to her?
An army would have let her pass--_the mother_!--for they knew, though
she did not know. ’Lizabeth saw but vaguely a number of people in the
room--so much the better; let all hear who would hear. It would be so
much the greater propitiation to an outraged heaven. She came in with a
kind of dumb state about her, everybody giving way before her. “The
mother!” they all said to each other with dismay, yet excitement. Some
one brought her a chair with anxious and pitying looks. She put it away
with a wave of her hand, yet made a little curtsey of acknowledgment in
old-fashioned politeness. It never occurred to her mind to inquire why
she was received with such obsequious attention. She advanced to the
table at which Sir Henry sat. He too looked pityingly, kindly at her,
not like his usual severity. God had prepared everything for her
atonement--was it not an earnest of its acceptance that He should thus
have put every obstacle out of her way?
“Sir Henry Stanton,” she said, “I’ve come to make you acquaint with a
story that all the country should have heard long ago. I’ve not had the
courage to tell it till this moment when the Lord has given me strength.
Bid them take pen and paper and put it all down in hand of write, and
I’ll set my name to it. It’s to clear them that are innocent that I’ve
come to speak, and to let it be known who was guilty; but it wasna him
that was guilty--it wasna him--but the madness in him,” she said, her
voice breaking for a moment. “My poor distracted lad!’
“Give her a seat,” said Sir Henry. “My poor woman, if you have any
information to give about this terrible event----”
“Ay, I have information--plenty information. Nay, I want no seat. I’m
standing as if I was at the judgment-seat of God; there’s where I’ve
stood this many a year, and been judged, but aye held fast. What is man,
a worm, to strive with his Maker?--but me, I’ve done that, that am but a
woman. I humbly crave the Almighty’s pardon, and I’ve made up my mind to
do justice now--at the last.”
The people about looked at each other, questioning one another what it
was, all but two, who knew what she meant. Young Lord Stanton, who was
close to the table, looked across at a tall stranger behind, by whom the
village constable was standing, and who replied to Geoff’s look by a
melancholy half-smile. The others looked at each other, and ’Lizabeth,
though she saw no one, saw this wave of meaning, and felt it natural
too.
“Ay,” she said, “you may wonder; and you’ll wonder more before all’s
done. I am a woman that was the mother of three; bonny bairns--though I
say it that ought not; ye might have ranged the country from Carlisle to
London town, and not found their like. My Lily was the beauty of the
whole water; up or down, there was not one that you would look at when
my lass was by. What need I speak? You all know that as well as me.”
The swell of pride in her as she spoke filled the whole company with a
thrill of admiration and wonder, like some great actress disclosing the
greatness of impassioned nature in the simplest words. She was old, but
she was beautiful too. She looked round upon them with the air of a
dethroned empress, from whom the recollection of her imperial state
could never depart. Rachel could not have done it, nor perhaps any other
of her profession. There was the sweetness of remembered triumph in the
midst of the most tragic depths; a gleam of pride and pleasure out of
the background of shame and pain.
“Ah! that’s all gone and past,” she went on with a sigh. “My eldest lad
was more than handsome, he was a genius as well. He was taken away from
me when he was but a little lad--and never came home again till--till
the devil got hold of him, and made him think shame of his poor mother,
and the poor place he was born in. I would never have blamed him. I
would have had him hold his head with the highest, as he had a
right--for had he not gotten that place for himself?--but when he came
back to the water-side a great gentleman and scholar, and would never
have let on where he belonged to, one that is not here to bear the
blame,” said ’Lizabeth, setting her teeth--“one that is gone to his
account--and well I wot the Almighty has punished him for his ill
deeds--betrayed my lad. Some of the gentry were good to him--as good as
the angels in heaven--but some were as devils, that being their nature.
And this is what I’ve got to say:” here she made a pause, raised herself
to her full height, and threw off the red kerchief from her head in her
agitation. “I’ve come here to accuse before God, and you, Sir Henry, my
son, Abel Bampfylde, him I was most proud of and loved best, of the
murder of young Lord Stanton, which took place on the morning of the 2nd
of August, eighteen hundred and forty-five--fifteen years ago and more.”
The sensation that followed is indescribable. Sir Henry Stanton himself
rose from his seat, excited by wonder, horror, and pity, beyond all
ordinary rule. The bystanders had but a vague sense of the extraordinary
revelation she made, so much were they moved by the more extraordinary
passion in her, and the position in which she stood. “My good woman, my
poor woman!” he cried, “this last dreadful tragedy has gone to your
brain--and no wonder. You don’t know what you say.”
She smiled--mournfully enough, but still it was a smile--and shook her
head. “If you had said it as often to yourself as I have done--night and
day--night and day; open me when I’m dead, and you’ll find it here,” she
cried--all unaware that this same language of passion had been used
before--and pressing her hand upon her breast. “The second of August,
eighteen hundred and forty-five--if you had said it over as often as
me!”
There was a whisper all about, and the lawyer of the district, who acted
as Sir Henry’s clerk on important occasions, stooped towards him and
said something. “The date is right. Yes, yes, I know the date is right,”
Sir Henry said, half-angrily. Then added, “There must be insanity in the
family. What more like the effort of a diseased imagination than to link
the old crime of fifteen years ago with what has happened to-day?”
“Is it me that you call insane?” said ’Lizabeth. “Eh, if it was but me!
But well I know what I’m saying.” Then the wild looks of all around her
suddenly impressed the old woman, too much occupied hitherto to think
what their looks meant. She turned round upon them with slowly awakening
anxiety. “You’re looking strange at me,” she cried, “you’re all looking
strange at me! What is this you’re saying that has happened to-day? Oh,
my lad is mad!--he’s roaming the hills, and Dick after him; he does na
know that he’s doing; he’s out of his senses; it’s no ill meaning. Lads,
some of you tell me, I’m going distracted. What has happened to-day?”
The change in her appearance was wonderful; her solemn stateliness and
abstraction were gone. Here was something she did not know. The flush of
anxiety came to her cheeks, her eyes contracted, her lips fell apart.
“Tell me,” she said, “for the love of God!”
No one moved. They looked at each other with pale, alarmed faces. How
could they tell her? Geoff stepped forward and took her by the arm very
gently. “Will you come with me?” he said. “Something has happened;
something that will grieve you deeply. I--I promised Dick to tell you,
but not here. Won’t you come with me?”
She drew herself out of his grasp with some impatience. “There’s been
some new trouble,” she said to herself--“some new trouble! No doubt more
violence. Oh, God, forgive him; but he does not know what he’s doing.
It’s you, my young lord?--you know it’s true what I’ve been saying. But
this new trouble, what is it?--more blood? Oh, tell me the worst; I can
bear it all, say, even if he was dead.”
“’Lizabeth,” said Geoff, with tears in his eyes--and again everybody
looked on as at a tragedy--“you are a brave woman; you have borne a
great deal in your life. He is dead; but that is not all.”
She did not note, nor perhaps hear, the last words. How should she? The
first was enough. She stood still in the midst of them, all gazing at
her, with her hands clasped before her. For a moment she said nothing.
The last drop of blood seemed to ebb from her brown cheeks. Then she
raised her face upward, with a smile upon it. “The Lord God be praised,”
she said; “He’s taken my lad before me.”
And when they brought to her the seat she had rejected, ’Lizabeth
allowed herself to be placed upon it. The extreme tension of both body
and mind seemed to have relaxed. The look of tragic endurance left her
face. A softened aspect of suffering, a kind of faint smile, like a wan
sunbeam, stole over it. The moisture came to her strained eyes. “Gone?
Is he gone at last? On the hill-side was it?--in some wild corner, where
none but God could be near, not his mother? And me that was dreading and
dreading I would be taken first; for who would have patience like his
mother? But after all, you know, neighbours, the father comes foremost;
and had more to do with him--more to do with him--than even me.”
“Take her away, Geoff,” said Sir Henry. The men were all overcome with
this scene, and with the knowledge of what remained to be told. Sir
Henry was not easily moved, but there was something even in _his_ throat
which choked him. He could not bear it, though it was nothing to him.
“Geoff, this is not a place to tell her all you have got to tell. Take
her away--take her--to Lady Stanton.”
“Nay, nay,” she said; “it’s my deathdoom, but it’s not like other
sorrow--I know well what grief is--when I heard for certain my Lily was
dead and gone, and me never to see her more. But this is not the same;
it’s my death, but I cannot call it sorrow; not like the loss of a son.
I’m glad too, if you understand that. Poor lad!--my Abel! Ay, ay; you’ll
not tell me but what God understands, and is more pitiful of His
handiwork, say than the like of you or me.”
“Come with me,” said Geoff, taking her by the arm. “Come, and I will
tell you everything, my poor ’Lizabeth. You know you have a friend in
me.”
“Ay, my young lord; but first let them write down what I’ve said, and
let me put my name to it. All the more because he’s dead and gone this
day.”
“Everything shall be done as you wish,” said Geoff anxiously; “but come
with me--come with me--my poor woman; this is not a place for you.”
“No,” she said--she would not rise from her seat. She turned round to
the table where Sir Henry and his clerk sat. “I must end my work now
it’s begun--I’ve another son, my kind gentlemen, and he will never
forgive me if I do not end my work. Write it out and let me sign. I have
but my Dick to think of now.”
A thrill of horror ran through the little assembly: to tell her that he
too was gone, who would dare to do it? John Musgrave, whom she had not
seen, stood behind, and covered his face with his hands. Sir Henry, for
all his steady nerves and unsympathetic mind, fell back in his chair
with a low groan. Only young Geoff, his features all quivering, the
tears in his eyes, stood by her side.
“Humour her,” he said. “Let her have her own way. None of us at this
moment surely could refuse her her way.”
The lawyer nodded. He had a heart of flesh and not of stone; and
’Lizabeth sat and waited, with her hands clasped together, her head a
little raised, her countenance beyond the power of painting. Grief and
joy mingled in it, and relief and anguish. Her eyes were dilated and
wet, but she shed no tears; their very orbits seemed enlarged, and there
was a quivering smile upon her mouth--a smile such as makes spectators
weep. “Here I and sorrow sit.” There was never a king worthy the name
but would have felt his state as nothing in this presence. But there was
no struggle in her now. She had yielded, and all was peace about her.
She would have waited for days had it been necessary. That what she had
begun should be ended was the one thing above all.
A man came hurriedly in as all the people present waited round,
breathless and reverential, for the completion of her testimony. Their
business, whatever it was, was arrested by force of nature. The kind old
Dogberry from the village, who had been standing by John Musgrave’s side
by way of guarding him, put up his hand to his forehead and made a
rustic bow to his supposed prisoner. “I always knowed that was how it
would turn out,” he said, as he hobbled off, to which John Musgrave
replied only by a faint smile, but stood still, as motionless as a
picture, though all semblance of restraint had melted away. But while
all waited thus reverentially a sudden messenger came rushing in, and
addressing Sir Henry in a loud voice, announced that the coroner had
sent him to make preparations for the inquest. “And he wants to know
what time it will be most convenient for the jury to inspect the two
bodies; and if they are both in the same place; and if it’s true.”
There was a universal hush, at which the man stopped in amazement. Then
his eye, guided by the looks of the others, fell upon the old woman in
the chair. She had heard him, and she was roused. Her face turned
towards him with a growing wonder. “She here! O Lord, forgive me!” he
cried, and fell back.
“Two bodies!” she said. A shudder came over her. She got up slowly from
her seat and looked round upon them all. “Two--another, another!--oh, my
unhappy lad!” She wrung her hands and looked round upon them, “Maybe
another house made desolate; maybe another woman--Will you tell me who
the other was?”
Here the labouring man, who had been with Wild Bampfylde on the
hill-side, and who was standing by, suddenly succumbed to the strange
horror and anguish of the moment. He burst out loudly into tears, crying
like a child. “Oh, poor ’Lizabeth, poor ’Lizabeth!” he cried; he could
not bear any more.
’Lizabeth looked at this man with the air of one awakening from a dream.
Then she turned a look of inquiry upon those around her. No one would
meet her eye. They shrank one behind another away from her, and more
than one man burst forth into momentary weeping like the first, and some
covered their faces in their hands. Even Geoff, sobbing like a child,
turned away from her for a moment. She held out her hands to them with a
pitiful cry, “Say it’s not that--say it’s not that!” she cried. The
shrill scream of anguish ran through the house. It brought Lady Stanton
and all the women shuddering from every corner. They all knew what it
was and how it was. The mother! What more needed to be said? They came
in and surrounded her, the frivolous girls and the rough women from the
kitchen, all together, while the men stood about looking on. Not even
Sir Henry could resist the passion of horror and sorrow which had taken
possession of the place. He cried with a voice all hoarse and trembling,
“Take her away!--take her away!”