In the Churchyard Porch.
Mary Anne Thornycroft had remained at home in a state of mind
bordering on distraction. Look where she would, there was no comfort.
Surely the death of Robert Hunter had been enough, with all its
attendant dreadful circumstances, without this fresh rumour of his
"coming again!" Like Mrs. Copp, until impressed with her friend Emma
Jenkins's experiences, Miss Thornycroft had never put faith in ghosts.
She was accustomed to ridicule those who believed in the one said to
haunt the plateau; but her scepticism was shaken now.
She had paid little attention to the first reports, for she knew how
prone the ignorant are in general, and Coastdown in particular, to
spread supernatural tales. But these reports grew and magnified.
Robert Hunter was dead and buried: how then reconcile that fact with
this mysterious appearance said to haunt the churchyard? Her mind
became shaken; and when, on the previous night, her brother Isaac
imparted to her the fact that he had seen it with his own sensible,
dispassionate eyes, a sickening conviction flashed over her that it
was indeed Robert Hunter's spirit. And now, to confirm it, came the
testimony of the matter-of-fact Sarah. Possibly, but for the sad
manner in which her nerves had been shaken, this new view might not
have been taken up.
"What does it want?" she asked herself, sitting there alone in the
gloomy parlour: and certain words just spoken by Sarah recurred to
her, as if in answer. "It may want to denounce its murderer." Stronger
even than the grief and regret she felt at his untimely fate, at the
abrupt termination of her unhappy love, was the lively dread of
discovery, for Richard's sake. That must be guarded against, if
it were possible; for what might it not bring in its train? The
betrayal of the illicit practices the Red Court Farm had lived
by; the dishonour of her father and his house; perhaps the
trial--condemnation--execution of Richard.
Sick, trembling, half mad with these reflections, pacing the room in
agony, was she, when Richard entered. Had he seen the ghost? He looked
as if he had. His damp hair hung about in a black mass, and his face
and lips were as ghastly as Hunter's. His sister gazed at him with
surprise: the always self-possessed Richard!
"Have you come from the village?" she asked.
"From that way."
"Did you happen to turn to the churchyard?"
"Yes," was the laconic reply.
"You know what they say: that _his_ spirit appears there."
"I have seen it," was Richard's unexpected answer.
Miss Thornycroft started. "Oh, Richard! When?"
"Now. I went to look, and I saw it. There's no mistake about its being
Hunter, or some fool made up to personate him."
"It has taken away your colour, Richard."
Richard Thornycroft did not reply. He sat with his elbow on his knee,
and his chin resting on his hand, looking into the fire. The once
brave man, brave to recklessness, had been scared for the first time
in his mortal life. The crime lying heavily on his soul had made a
coward of him.
He said nothing of the details, but they must be supplied. Shortly
after Isaac had quitted Tomlett's, Richard also left, intending to go
straight home. As he struck across to the direct road--not the one by
the plateau--a thought came to him to take a look at the churchyard;
and he turned to it.
There was Robert Hunter. As Richard's footsteps sounded on the night
air, nearing the churchyard, the head and shoulders of the haunting
spirit appeared, raising themselves behind old Marley's high
tombstone. Richard stood still. "There was no mistake," as he observed
to his sister, "that it was Hunter." And the eyes of the two were
strained, the one on the other. Suddenly the ghost came into full view
and advanced, and Richard Thornycroft turned and fled. An arrant
coward he at that moment, alone with the ghost and his own awful
conscience.
Whether the apparition would have pursued him; whether Richard would
have gathered bravery enough to turn and face it, could never be
known. The doctor's boy, having been to the heath with old Connaught's
physic, ran past shouting and singing; "the whistling aloud to keep
his courage up," as Bloomfield (is it not?) so subtly says, was not
enough now for those who had to pass the churchyard at Coastdown. The
ghost vanished, and Richard strode on to the Red Court Farm.
But he did not tell of all this. Mary Anne, who had been bending her
head on the arm of the sofa, suddenly rose, resolution in her face and
in her low, firm tone.
"Richard, if you accompany me for protection, I will go and see this
spirit. I will ask what it wants. Let us go."
"You!" he somewhat contemptuously exclaimed.
"I will steel my nerves and heart to it. I have been striving to do so
for the last half hour. Better for me to hold communion with it than
any one else, save you. You know why, Richard."
"Tush!" he exclaimed. "Do nothing. You'd faint by the way."
"It is necessary for the honour and safety of--of--this house," she
urged, not caring to speak more pointedly, "that no stranger should
hear what it wants. I will go now. If I wait until to-morrow my
courage may fail. I _go_, Richard, whether with you or alone. You are
not afraid?"
For answer, Richard rose, and they left the room. In passing through
the hall, Mary Anne threw on her woollen shawl and garden-bonnet, just
as she had thrown them on the night of Hunter's murder; and they
started.
Not a word was spoken by either until they reached the corner of the
churchyard. The high, thickset hedge, facing them as they advanced,
prevented their seeing into it, but they would soon come in front,
where the shrubs grew low behind the iron railings. Miss Thornycroft
stopped.
"You stay here, Richard. I will go on alone."
"No," he began, but she peremptorily interrupted him.
"I will have it so. If I am to go on with this, I will be alone. You
can keep me within sight." And Richard acquiesced, despising himself
for his cowardice, but unable to overcome it. He could not--no, he
_could_ not face the man whose life he had taken.
Mary Anne Thornycroft opened the gate and went in. In his place (he
seemed to have specially appropriated to himself) behind old Marley's
tomb, stood Robert Hunter. _How_ she contrived to advance--contrived
to face him and keep her senses, Mary Anne Thornycroft could never
afterwards understand.
Is it of any use to go on mystifying you, my reader? Perhaps from the
first you have suspected the truth. Any way, it may be better to solve
the secret, for time is growing limited, as it was solved that night
to Mary Anne and Richard Thornycroft. The ghost, prowling about still,
was looking out for Richard, its sole object all along; but it was
Robert Hunter himself and not his ghost. For Robert Hunter was not
dead.
He had been in London all the while they mourned him so, as much alive
as any of his mourners, quite unconscious that he was looked upon as
murdered, and that the county coroner had held an inquest on his body.
A week since, he had come down from London to Coastdown, had come in
secret, not caring to show himself in the neighbourhood, and not
daring to show himself openly to the Thornycrofts. He wanted to obtain
an interview with Mary Anne; but to want it was a great deal easier
than to get it, in consequence of that extravagant and hasty oath
imposed upon him by Richard. According to its terms, he must not write
to any one of the inmates of the Red Court Farm; he must not enter it;
he must not show himself at Coastdown; and he could only hit upon the
plan of coming down en cachette, keeping himself close by day, and
watching for Richard at night. Not a very brilliant scheme, but he
could think of no better; and, singular perhaps to say, there was no
bar to his speaking to Richard if he met him; if the spirit of the
oath provided against that, the letter did not; and Robert Hunter's
business was urgent. So he came down to Jutpoint, walked over at
night, and took up his quarters in a lonely hut that he knew of behind
the churchyard, inhabited by a superannuated fisherman, old Parkes.
The aged fisherman, of dim sight and failing memory, did not know his
guest; he was easily bribed not to tell of his sojourn; and the
rumours of the ghost had not penetrated to him. In that hut Hunter lay
by day, and watched from the churchyard by night, as being a likely
spot to see Richard, who used often to pass and repass it on his way
to and from the heath, and an _un_likely one to be seen and recognised
by the public. With that convenient tomb of old Marley's to shelter
behind whenever footsteps approached, he did not fear. Unfortunately,
it was necessary that he should look out to see whether the footsteps
were not Richard's; and this looking out had brought about all the
terror. His retreating place, when people had intruded into the
churchyard, Isaac for one, was under a shelving gravestone at the back
of the church, where none would think of looking. And there he had
been on the watch, never dreaming that he was being mistaken for his
own ghost, for he knew nothing of his supposed murder.
In little more than half-a-dozen sentences this was revealed to Mary
Anne Thornycroft. It was the last night that he could stay: and he had
resolved, in the fear of having to go back to London with his errand
unexecuted, to accost any one of the Thornycroft family that might
approach him, although by so doing the oath was infringed. As their
voices were borne on the night air to the ear of Richard, sufficient
evidence that Hunter was a living man, a load fell from his heart. In
the first blissful throb of the discovery, the thought that surged
through him, turning darkness into light, was, "If he is alive, I am
no murderer." He ran forward, gained the spot where they stood,
grasped Hunter's hand and well-nigh embraced him. He, the cold, stern,
undemonstrative Richard Thornycroft! he, with all his dislike of
Hunter!
Do you consider well what that joy must be--relief from the supposed
committed crime of murder? The awful nightmare that has been weighing
us down: the sin that has been eating away our heartstrings! Some of
us may have faintly experienced this in a vision during sleep.
"I do not understand it, Hunter," whispered Richard, his words taking
a sobbing sound as they burst from his heaving breast in the intensity
of his emotion. "It is like awaking from some hideous dream. If I shot
you down, how is it that you are here?"
"You never shot me down. Old Parkes has been driving at some obscure
tale about young Hunter being shot from the heights; but I treated it
as a childish old man's fancies. Mary Anne, too, is wearing mourning
for me, she says, though ostensibly put on for Lady Ellis, and came
here to have speech of my ghost. I thought ghosts had gone out with
the eighteenth century."
All three felt bewildered; idea after idea crowding on their minds:
not one of them as yet clear or tangible. Mary Anne could not so soon
overcome the shivering sensation that, had been upon her, and caught
hold of her brother's arm for support. There was much of explanation
to be had yet.
"Let us go and sit down in the church porch," she said; "we shall be
quiet there."
They walked round the narrow path towards it. It was on the side of
the church facing the Red Court. The brother and sister placed
themselves on one bench: Hunter opposite. The moonlight streamed upon
them, but they were in no danger there of being observed by any chance
passer-by; for the hedge skirting the ground on that side was high and
thick.
"That night," began Richard, "after you had gone away, what brought
you back again?"
"Back where?" asked Hunter.
"Back on the plateau. Watching the fellows from the boats."
"I was not there. I did not come back."
The assertion sounded like a false one in the teeth of recollection.
Mary Anne broke the silence, her low tone rather an impatient one.
"I _saw_ you there, Robert--I and Anna Chester. We were coming up to
speak to you, and got as far as the Round Tower--"
"What was worse, _I_ saw you," hoarsely broke in Richard. "After what
had passed between us, and your solemn oath to me, I felt shocked at
your want of faith. I was maddened by your bad feeling, your obstinate
determination to spy upon and betray us; and I stood by that same
Round Tower and shot you down."
"I do not know what you are talking of," returned. Robert Hunter. "I
tell you I never came back; never for one moment I got to Jutpoint by
half-past ten or a quarter to eleven, so you may judge that I stepped
out well."
"Did Cyril go there with you?"
"Cyril! Of course not. He left me soon after we passed the village. He
only came as far as the wherry. I have been looking for Cyril while
dodging about in this churchyard. I'd rather have seen him than you.
He would not have been violent, you know, and would have carried you
my message."
"We have never seen Cyril since that night," said Miss Thornycroft.
"Not seen Cyril!" echoed Hunter. "Where is he?"
"But we are not uneasy about him," said Richard, dropping his voice.
"At least, I am not. We expect he went off in the boats with the
smugglers when they rowed back to the ship that night after the cargo
was run. Indeed, we feel positive of it. My father once did the same,
to the terror of my mother. I believe she had him advertised. Cyril is
taking a tolerably long spell on the French coast; but I think I can
account for that. He will come home now."
"Still you have not explained," resumed Hunter. "What gave rise to
this report that I was shot down?"
"Report!" cried Richard, vehemently, his new-found satisfaction
beginning to fade, as sober recollection returned to him. "Somebody
was shot, if you were not. We had the coroner's inquest on him, and he
lies buried in this churchyard as Robert Hunter."
"But the features could not have been mine," debated Hunter.
"The face was not recognisable; but the head and hair were yours, and
the dress was yours--a black dinner suit; and---- By the way," broke
off Richard, "what is this mystery? This coat, which you appear now to
have on, is at this moment in the stables at the Mermaid, and has been
ever since the inquest."
Does the reader notice that one word of Richard
Thornycroft's--"Appear?" _Appear_ to have on! Was he still doubting
whether the man before him could be real?
"Oh, this is Dr. Macpherson's," said Hunter, with a brief laugh. "They
were fellow coats, you know, Mary Anne. You did not send me my own--at
least, I never received it; and one cold day, when I happened to be
there, the professor surreptitiously handed me his out of a lumber
closet, glad to get rid of it, hoping madame would think it was
stolen. She could not forget the grievance of his having bought them.
Why did not mine come with the portmanteau?"
More amazement, more puzzle, and Richard further at sea than ever.
"When you left that night, you had your coat with you, Hunter. I saw
you put it on."
"But I found it an encumbrance. I had taken more wine than usual. I
had had other things to make me hot, and I did not relish the prospect
of carrying it, whether on or off, for five or six miles. So I took it
off when we got to the wherry, and begged Cyril to carry it back with
him, and send it with the portmanteau the following morning."
A pause of thought; it seemed they were trying to realize the sense of
the words. Suddenly Mary Anne started, gasped, and laid her face down
on her brother's shoulder, with a sharp, low moan of pain. _He_ leaned
forward and, stared at Hunter, a pitiable expression of dread on
his countenance, as the moonlight fell on his ghastly face and
strained-back lips.
"Cyril said, he was glad of it, and put it on, for he had come out
without one, and felt cold," continued Hunter, carelessly. "He has not
been exposed to all weathers, as I have. It fitted him capitally."
A cry, shrill and, wild as that which had broken from the dying man in
his fall, now broke from Richard Thornycroft.
"Stop!" he shouted, in the desperation of anguish; "don't you see?"
"See what?" demanded the astonished Hunter.
"_That I have murdered my brother!_"
Alas! alas! As they sat gazing at each other with terror-stricken
faces, you might have heard their hearts beat. Poor Richard
Thornycroft! Had any awakening to horror been like unto his!
"Murdered your brother?" slowly repeated Hunter.
It was too true. The unfortunate Cyril Thornycroft, arrayed in
Hunter's coat; had been mistaken by them for him in the starlight, and
Richard had shot him dead. In returning home after parting with Hunter
at the wherry, there could be no doubt that he had gone straight to
the heights to see whether the work which had been planned for that
night with the smugglers was being carried on, or whether the
discovery made by Hunter had checked it. It was the coat, the
miserable coat, that had deceived them. And there was the general
resemblance they bore to each other, as previously mentioned. In
height, in figure, in hair, they might have been taken for one
another, and had been, even in the daylight, during Hunter's stay
at Coastdown. But it was not all this that had led to the dreadful
error--it was the fatal and conspicuous coat.
Everything had contributed to the delusion, before life and after
death. The face might have been anybody's for all the signs of
recognition left in it. They wore, and only they, each a black dress
dinner-suit, and Cyril, in his forgetfulness had put away his purse
and watch. His money--he generally carried it so--was loose in his
pockets: how were they to know that the same custom was not followed
by Hunter? The white pocket-handkerchief happened to bear no mark, and
his linen was not disturbed. Nothing was taken off him but his upper
clothes, the coat and the above-said dinner-suit. It was an
exceptional death, you see, not a pleasant one to handle, and they
just put a shroud over the under clothes, and so buried him. But for
that would have been seen on the shirt the full mark--"Cyril
Thornycroft."
Who shall attempt to describe the silence of horror that fell on the
church porch after the revelation? Richard quitted his seat and stood
upright, looking out, as it seemed; and his sister's head then sought
a leaning-place against the cold trellis-work.
"How was it you never wrote to me?" at length asked Robert Hunter, in
a low voice. "Had you done so, this mystery would have been cleared
up."
"Wrote to _you?_" wailed Richard. "Do you forget we thought you were
here?" stamping his foot on the sod of the churchyard.
"I can hardly understand it yet," mused Robert Hunter.
Richard Thornycroft turned and touched his sister. "Let us go home,
Mary Anne. We have heard enough."
Without a word of dissent or approval, she rose and put her arm within
Richard's; her face white and rigid as it had been at the coroner's
inquest. Hunter spoke then.
"But, Mary Anne--what I wanted to say to you--I have not yet said a
word of it."
"I cannot talk to-night," she shuddered. "I cannot--I cannot."
"Then--I suppose--I must stay another day," he rejoined, wondering
privately what would be said and thought of him in London. "May I come
to the Red Court to-morrow?"
"If you will," answered Richard. "No necessity for concealment now. I
absolve you from your oath."
But Mary Anne saw further than either of them; saw that it would not
do. Richard walked forward, but she remained, and touched Mr. Hunter
on the arm.
"No, Robert, it must not be. You must still be in this neighbourhood--
for a time at any rate--as dead and buried."
"Why? Far better to let them know I have not been murdered: and set
their suspicions at rest."
"That you have not, but that another has," she returned, resentfully.
"Would you have them rake up the matter, and hold a second inquest,
and so set them upon my unfortunate brother Richard? His punishment,
as it is, will be sufficiently dreadful and lasting."
"Do not speak to me in that tone of reproach," was the pained
rejoinder. "You may be sure that I deeply sympathize and grieve with
you all. I will continue to conceal myself: but how shall I see you?
One more day, and business will enforce my return to London."
"I will see you here, in this place, to-morrow night."
"At what hour?"
"As soon as dusk comes on. Say seven."
"You will not fail, Mary Anne?"
"Fail!" she repeated, vehemently. Then, in a quieter tone, as she
would have walked away, "No; I will be sure to come."
Robert Hunter grasped her hand, as if to draw her towards him for a
fond embrace, but Miss Thornycroft wrenched her hand away with a half
cry, and went on to join her brother. "Good night, dear Robert," she
presently called out, in a gentle voice, as if to atone for her abrupt
movement: but oh! what a mine of anguish that voice betrayed!
In the midst of the same silence that they had come, they went back
again, walking side by side in the road, but not touching each other.
Ah! what anguish it was that lay on both of them! We never know; in
great affliction we are so apt to think that we can bear nothing
worse, and live. It had seemed to Richard Thornycroft and his sister,
when they went down to the churchyard, that no heavier weight of
misery could be theirs than that lying on them; it seemed now in going
back, as if that had been light, compared with this.
"Richard," she whispered, in her great pity, as they passed through
the entrance gates of the Red Court Farm, "he is better off; he was
fit to go. You know it must be so. Cyril is in heaven with God; it
seems now as if he had been living on for it."
Richard hardly heard the words. He was thinking his own thoughts. "The
death must have been a painless one."
She was true to her promise. The following evening, when dark fell and
before the moon was up, Robert Hunter and Miss Thornycroft sat once
more in the church porch. The night was very cold, sharp, raw; but
from a feeling of considerate delicacy, which she understood and
mentally thanked him for, he was without a great-coat. He rightly
judged that the only one he had with him could in her eyes be nothing
but an object of horror.
What a day that had been at the Red Court! Mr. Thornycroft had sat on
the magisterial bench at Jutpoint, trying petty offenders, unconscious
that there was a greater offender at his own house demanding
punishment. Richard Thornycroft felt inclined to proclaim the truth
and deliver himself up to justice. The remorse which had taken
possession of him was greater than he knew how to bear; and it seemed
that to expiate his offence at the criminal bar of his country, would
be more tolerable than to let it thus prey upon him in silence, eating
away his heart and his life. Consideration for his father and sister,
for their honourable reputation, alone withheld him. He and Cyril had
been fond brothers. Cyril, of delicate health and gentle manners, had
been, as it were, the pet of the robust justice and his robust elder
sons. The home, so far as Richard was concerned, must be broken up: he
would go abroad, the farther distant the better. But for his sister,
he had started that day. Something of this she told Mr. Hunter, in an
outburst of her great suffering.
"Oh, Robert! even allowing that he shall escape, what a secret it will
be for me and my brother Isaac to carry through life!"
"Time will soften it to you. You are both innocent."
"Time will never soften it to me. My dear brother Cyril!--so loving to
us all, so _good!_"
Her hands were before her face as if she would conceal its tribulation
from the dark night. Robert Hunter, who had been standing, drew her
hands within his, sat down beside her on the narrow bench, and kept
them there.
"Time is wearing on, Mary Anne, and I must be at Jutpoint to-night.
May I say what I came down from town to say? Though it pains me to
enter upon it now you are in this grief."
"What is it, Robert?"
"You have not forgotten that there was a probability of my going
abroad? Well, the arrangements are now concluded, and I start in the
course of a few days. I did not think of being off before the summer,
but it has been settled differently."
"Yes. Well?"
"This alters my position altogether in a pecuniary point of view, and
I shall now rest at ease, the future assured. The climate is
excellent; the residence out all that can be wished for. In a week
from this I ought to take my departure."
"Yes," she repeated, in the same tone of apathy as before. "What else?
Make haste, Robert--I must begone; I am beginning to shiver. I have
these shivering fits often now."
"I want you to go with me, my love," he whispered, in an accent of
deep tenderness. "I came down to urge it; but now that this
unfortunate affair has been made known to me, I would doubly urge it.
As my wife, you will forget----"
"Be quiet, Robert!" she impetuously interrupted, "you cannot know what
you are saying."
"Yes, I do; I wish you to understand I may be away for five years."
"So much the better. You and I, of all people in the world, must live
apart. Was this what you had to say?"
"I thought you loved me," he rejoined, quite petrified at her words.
"I did love you; I do love you; if to avow it will do any good now.
But this dreadful sorrow has placed a barrier between us."
There ensued a bitter pause. Robert Hunter was smarting with a sense
of injustice.
"Mary Anne! Surely you are not laying on _me_ the blame of that
terrible calamity!"
"Listen, Robert," she returned. "I am not so unjust as to blame you
for the actual calamity, but I cannot forget that you and I have been
the cause of it."
"You!"
"Yes, I. When my father heard that I had invited you down, he came to
me, and forbid me to let you come. I see now why. They did not want
strangers in his house, who might see more than was expedient. He
commanded me to write and stop you. I disobeyed; I thought papa spoke
but in compliance with a whim of Richard's; and I would not write. Had
I obeyed him, all this would have been spared. Again, when you and I
told what the supervisor said, that there were smugglers abroad, my
father ordered us, you especially, not to interfere. Had you observed
his wishes to the letter, Cyril would have been alive now. These
reflections haunt me continually; they will be mine for ever. No,
Robert, you and I must live apart. If I were to marry you, I should
expect Cyril to rise reproachfully before me on our wedding-day."
"Oh, Mary Anne! Believe me you see matters in a false light. If----"
"I will not discuss it," she peremptorily interrupted, "it would be of
no avail, and I shudder while I speak. Spare me argument."
"I think you are forgetting that I have a stake in the matter as well
as yourself," he quietly said, his tone proving how great the pain
was. "Do you not know what, deprived of you, my future life will be?
At least, I have a right to say a few words."
"Well--yes, that's true. I suppose I did forget, Robert."
"Forgive me then for reminding you that the sole and immediate cause
of Cyril's death, is _Richard_. I did nothing whatever to help it on;
my conscience is clear; the most prejudiced man could not charge me
with it. And you? It is certainly a pity--I am speaking plainly--that
you disobeyed Mr. Thornycroft in allowing me to come to the Red Court;
it was very wrong; but still you did it not with any ill intention,
and certainly do not merit the punishment of being condemned to live a
lonely life."
"But Richard is my brother. See what it has brought on _him_."
"What he has brought upon himself," corrected Mr. Hunter. "I do not
see that his being your brother throws, or should be allowed to throw
any bar upon your marriage with me. You would not say so had he been a
stranger."
"Where is the use of arguing?" she broke in. "I cannot bear it; I will
not hear it. All is at an end between us. Do you forgive me, Robert,
if I cause you pain? Nothing in the world, or out of it, shall ever
induce me to become your wife."
"Is this your fixed determination?"
"Fixed and unalterable. Fixed as those stars above us. Fixed as
Cyril's grave."
"Then it only remains for me to return the way I came," he gloomily
said. "And the sooner I start the better."
They stood up; looking for a moment each into the other's face. There
was no relenting in hers. "Fare you well, Mary Anne."
She put her hand into his, and, overcome by the dead anguish at her
heart, burst into tears. He drew her to his breast. None can know what
that anguish was to her, even of the parting. He held her to him and
soothed her sobs, now with a loving look, now with a gentle action;
and then he broke into words of passionate entreaty, that she would
retract her cruel determination, and suffer him to speak to her
father. But he little knew Mary Anne Thornycroft if he thought that
she would yield.
"Say no more; it is quite useless. Oh, Robert, don't you see it is as
bitter for me as for you?"
"No; or you would not inflict it."
"Strive to forget me, Robert," she murmured. "We have been very dear
to each other, but you must find some one else now. Perhaps we may
meet in after life--when you are a happy man with wife and children!"
He went with her to the churchyard gates, and watched her as she
turned to her home. And so they parted. Robert Hunter retraced his
steps up the churchyard, and from behind a gravestone, where he had
laid them out of sight, took up his little black travelling-bag, and
the rolled-up coat, the counterpart of which had proved so unlucky a
coat for the Red Court Farm. He never intended to put it on again--at
least in the neighbourhood of Coastdown. Then he set off to walk to
Jutpoint, avoiding the road by means of a bypath, as he had set off to
walk that guilty night some weeks before.
The night had clouded over, the stars disappeared, the moon was not
seen. Drops of rain began to fall, threatening a heavy shower. On it
came, thicker and faster; wetter and wetter got he; but it may be
questioned whether he gave to it one single thought.
His reflections were buried quite as much in the past as in the
present. He murmured to himself the word "RETRIBUTION." He asked how
_he_ could ever have dreamt of indulging a prospect of happiness; he
almost laughed at the utter mockery of the hope. As he had blighted
his wife's life, so had Mary Anne Thornycroft, his late and only love,
now blighted his. She--poor Clara--had died of the pain; he, of
sterner stuff, must carry it along with him. Amid his days of labour,
through his nights of perhaps broken rest, it would, lie upon him--a
well-earned recompense! No murmur came forth from his heart or lips;
he simply bowed his head in acknowledgment of the justice. God was
ever true. And Robert Hunter lifted his hat in the pouring rain, and
raised his eyes to heaven in sad thankfulness that the pain his sin
had caused was at length made clear to him.