THE MYSTERIES LAID OPEN.
While nurse was by turns dictating her letter and sighing, till the
scribe caught the infection, and lost his spirits; while the wind moaned
in the crevices of the ricketty dwelling, and the flame of the single
candle flared and flickered in the draughts of the poor apartment,
Ambrose was under a securer shelter, and Mildred under none at all.
Ambrose had been assisting in swearing in new brothers who had joined
his lodge. He had helped to blindfold them, and to guide them through
the mummeries which were calculated to answer any purpose rather than
that of adding sanctity to an oath. The jargon of the verse to be
gabbled over, the dressing up, the locking in, were more like the
Christmas games of very young school-boys than the actual proceedings,
the serious business of grown men. Mummery has usually or always arisen
from an inconvenient lack of shorter and plainer methods of explanation,
and of facilities for communication. This sort of picture-writing is
discarded, by common consent, wherever the press comes in to fulfil the
object with more ease, speed, and exactitude. When Ambrose declared that
“there is nothing like ceremony, after all,” he testified that he
belonged to a nation or a class which is stinted in the best means of
communication, and kept in an infantine state of knowledge and pursuit.
If he had been growing up to a period of mature wisdom, like his
brother, he would have told the brethren of his lodge that there is
nothing so childish as ceremony, after all. To form into a lodge, or a
company, or whatever it may be called, when a number of men have
business to do, is the most ready and unobjectionable method of
transacting that business; but if the brethren cannot be kept in order
and harmony without being amused by shows, or excited by mystification,
they had far better be playing cricket on the green, than pretend to
assist in conducting the serious affairs of their class. Much better
would it have been for Ambrose to have been playing cricket on the green
this evening, than frightening people even more ignorant than himself
with death’s heads, horrible threats, and oaths made up of the most
alarming words that could be picked out of the vocabulary of unstamped
newspapers. Much better would it have been for him to have been reading
anything,—book, pamphlet, or newspaper,—than to have sent his sister on
such an errand as she was transacting on the hills.
Mildred was made, without her own knowledge, a servant of the lodge, a
messenger from all the discontented with whom Ambrose was connected to
all the discontented in the district. This trouble was imposed upon her
because the country folks were unable to read, and paper was dear, and
advertisements were dearer still. The object was to bring people
together to consult on their fortunes, and the measures that should be
taken to mend them. Mr. Arruther would have said that it was well that
so improper an object should be frustrated by the absence of all
assistance from the press: but Mr. Arruther might have been told that
there is no frustrating such an object; and that the only effect of the
press not being concerned in it was, that the summons bore a very
different character from what it would have had, if there had been
perfect freedom of communication. In a newspaper, the notice would have
been that people were to meet at such a spot, at such an hour, and for
such and such a purpose. As it was, Mildred was scudding over the hills,
shivering whenever the gust overtook her, as if it must bring something
dreadful; starting if she found any one awaiting her at the appointed
places, and trembling if it was herself that must wait; and faltering or
gabbling in equal terror, as she delivered the circular which was to be
carried forwards by those whom she met; the circular being as follows:—
“Meet on Arneford Green,
Six and seven between.
Bring words as sharp as sickles,
To cut the throats
Of gentlefolks,
That rob the poor of victuals.
Hungry guts and empty purse
May be better, can’t be worse.”
The political wisdom of the district had discovered that all was going
wrong within it. Farmer Mason’s live stock was dying off, and his wife
had been long confined to her bed with some grievous affliction.
Neighbour Green’s dog had gone mad, and had been very near biting some
children that were playing in the road. The wheat on the uplands looked
poorly; and the mill-stream was dry; so that many of Mr. Waugh’s
workpeople were out of employ. It must be a very bad government that
allowed all this to happen at once, some people said: but there were
many who hinted that the blame did not all rest with the Government, and
that there was one person who might some day prove to have had more to
do with those disasters than everybody liked to say. This hint had gone
the round, and become amplified in its course, till it was considered a
settled matter by every one who entertained the subject at all, that
nurse Ede was quite as pernicious to Arneside as the Government and all
the gentlefolks put together; and that there should be no attempt at
rebellion till nurse had been called to account for her witcheries.
The affair had been brought to a crisis by this evening, when Mildred
was delivering her circular on the hills. She was expected and lain in
wait for. Suddenly she fell in with a party who would not let her
proceed till she had been sworn on her knees to tell all she knew of her
mother’s proceedings, of the nature of her intercourse with her black
cat, and of the uses of the mysterious apparatus which now filled her
cupboard as well as the shelf. The girl knew nothing of what she was
required to confess; but she did what she could to please her tyrants.
She poured out all the nonsensical fancies, all the absurd suspicions,
which had been accumulating in her ignorant mind from the days of her
childhood till now. The sum total proved even more satisfactory than the
party had expected.—There was now but one thing to be done. Nurse must
be forced to recant, and make reparation; and that as soon as possible.
The managers of the enterprise must not quit their hold of her till she
had begun to restore Mrs. Mason; revive the calves and poultry that
remained alive, if she could not restore those which were dead; set the
mill-wheel revolving again; brought showers upon the upland corn-fields,
and confessed precisely what kind and degree of influence she had
exerted over poor Mrs. Arruther: for it was not to be forgotten how the
lightning had split the tree beside the lady’s monument, the last thing
before it fired Farmer Mason’s barn.
While all this was passing, nurse had dismissed the good-natured
schoolmaster, and had looked after him from the door, shading her candle
with her apron, till she could see him no longer; and had sat down, with
a sigh at her loneliness, to mend one more pair of stockings for
Ambrose, to take the chance of one or other of her children coming home
for the night. She had nearly given the matter up when she thought she
heard a little noise outside the door. As she looked up, she saw a very
white face pressed close to the window, and looking in upon her.
“Come in! Who’s there? Lift up the latch and come in, whoever you are,”
cried she, who, having never wished harm to any human being, had no fear
of receiving harm from the hands of any. “My girl!” exclaimed she, as
Mildred stood on the threshold, looking uncertain whether to set foot in
the cottage, or to retreat, “My dear, ye are right enough to come home
to a warm bed to-night. It will be but a chilly night for sleeping
beside the fold, if that is really what ye do when ye don’t come home.
I’ve been looking for ye, my dear; so, come in, and shut the door, and
see what supper I’ve been keeping ready for ye. Why do ye keep standing
outside in that way, Mildred?”
As nurse sat at the table, looking over her spectacles, with her candle
on one side, and the cat on the other, drowsily opening and shutting its
eyes, as if quite at ease, there seemed to be something which prevented
Mildred from advancing a step towards the party. She only said in a
shrill tone,
“They’re coming.”
Who was coming,—whether Ambrose and the brethren from the lodge, or the
long-dreaded Turks, or any people more to be feared still, could not be
ascertained. All that could be got out of Mildred was, “They’re coming.”
The door was still standing wide, the parley was still proceeding, when
they came.
A night of horrors followed; horrors which were once perpetrated in the
metropolitan cities of mighty empires; and then descended to inferior
towns; and then were banished to the country; and now are seldom to be
heard of, even in the remotest haunts of ignorance. But such horrors are
not yet extinct. Since the sacrifice of nurse Ede, others, perhaps as
guileless and kind of heart, have met a fate like hers.
During the whole of the dreadful scene of violence and torment, the
mother called on her children. As if they had all been present, she
implored them to bear witness as to what her life had been, and to save
her from her persecutors. She had reared her sons with incessant
watchfulness, from the time that their little hands could only grasp her
finger, up to the manly strength which might have saved her now: but
Owen was far away, dreaming of no evil; and as for Ambrose, his face was
never seen, all that night. Mildred was present,—standing in her
mother’s view during all those fearful hours; but the call on her was
also in vain. She stood staring, with her arms by her sides, and her
hair on end, only wincing and moving back a little when her mother’s
appeals to her became particularly vehement. This was the child who had
been the object of as fond parental hopes as had ever been shed over the
unconsciousness of infancy. Hers was the arm which was to have been her
mother’s support to church on Sabbath days. Hers were the hands which
were to have relieved her parent of the more laborious of their homely
tasks. She it was who should have enlivened the day with her cheerful
industry, and amused the evening with the intelligence which nurse had
done her best to put in the way of improvement. This was the child! And
this was the contrast which flitted through her unhappy mother’s mind as
she was dragged past Mrs. Arruther’s monument, and taunted with the
memory of that poor lady.
Mrs. Arruther and she were both unhappy as mothers. The child of the one
was as destitute (whatever might be his scholarship) of all the
knowledge which is of most value in the conduct and embellishment of
life, as these his despised neighbours; and the protracted torment which
he caused his parent might, in its sum, equal that which nurse was
enduring to-night. The crowning proof of his substantial ignorance was
his desire and endeavour to keep others in that state of darkness of
which the deeds of this night were some of the results. There will be no
more mothers so wretched as Mrs. Arruther and her nurse when mothers
themselves shall know how to give their children true knowledge; and
when their children shall have access to that true knowledge without
hindrance and without measure.
One thrilling sound of complaint at last penetrated the chamber of the
clergyman; and, in consequence, nurse was presently in her own bed,
attended upon by Kate Jeffery, while Mildred sat in a corner of the
cottage, staring as before. She let Kate bring her to the bedside, when
her parent’s unquenchable tenderness was kindling up once more; but the
girl was pitiably at a loss what to say, and how to conduct herself.
“I never did, my dear; if you will believe the last words I shall ever
speak. I never did, or thought of doing such things as they say. Tell
them so, when I am gone; will you? Only tell them what I said. O
Mildred, cannot you promise me even that much?”
“She is mazed,” said Kate Jeffery, in excuse of her old play-fellow.
“She will come to, by-and-by.”
“I wish I was mazed, if it be not thankless to say so,” muttered nurse.
“But it will all be over soon. Well: it is God’s will that my son Owen
is so far from me at this time.”
She little guessed how soon her son Owen would be standing where Kate
was now. But, soon as it was, it was too late for nurse.
It was indeed a withered and haggard cheek (as nurse once anticipated)
that her children looked upon as they watched her rest;—not her
breathing sleep, but her last long rest. Owen must have been quite
overthrown by meeting such a shock on his arrival, or he could never
have spoken to Mildred as he did. He upbraided her for the stupidity
with which she had given ear to the ridiculous falsehoods which had been
hatched against one of the most harmless women that had ever lived:
falsehoods that any child in L would have been ashamed to be asked to
believe. But it was impossible that Mildred, or any one else, could have
really credited such things. It could have been only a pretence
“No; no pretence,” Kate interposed to say. “There would have been no
malice, if there had not been profound ignorance. No one could have
helped loving nurse, and doing nothing but good to her, up to her dying
day, if it had but been known why and how she practised her art; and
that no woman has really the power, by prayers and charms, of stopping
mill-streams and maddening dogs.”
“How could I tell?” mournfully asked Mildred. “They all said——I’m sure I
thought they would have killed me first. They all said, and they all
think, that she was an awful and a wicked woman; and what else could I
think? I’m sure I never durst touch her, or scarce anything that she had
touched before me, after what Maude Hallowell told me.”
“You are out of your mind, I think,” said Owen, bitterly. “To talk as
you do, and she lying there!”
“And if Mildred was out of her mind, Mr. Owen,” said Kate, in a low
voice, “is she to be taunted with it, as if it was her fault? I should
rather say that she has very little mind; for hers seems to me never to
have grown since we were at the Sunday school together. Surely, Mr.
Owen, it is the narrow mind that is least able to help itself under
foolish fears, and any horrible fancy that may be riding it till it is
weary. Surely it is not merciful to taunt a mind that is so miserable in
itself already.”
“Then I will not taunt her, Kate. It will be sorrow enough to her, all
her days, to have to pass my mother’s grave, and think how she was sent
there. Go, poor girl, and tell the clergyman that it is all over. Nobody
shall hurt you: I will take care of you. Nobody shall blame you: the
blame shall rest elsewhere.”
“Where?” asked the bewildered girl, as, in a flurried manner, she tied
on her bonnet to go to the clergyman. “What are you going to do now,
Owen? Where——what did you say last?”
“That nobody shall blame you, as I did just now, for what has happened
to our mother. It is no fault of yours, Mildred, any more than it can be
called Ambrose’s fault that he now lies in prison——”
“In prison!”
“Yes: he has been taken there (God knows whether according to law or
not) for the part he has taken about swearing in the brothers at his
Lodge. There he was, poor fellow, when my mother was calling upon him in
a way to break a heart of stone, they say.” Owen saw the convulsion
which passed over his sister’s countenance as he made this allusion; and
he resolved to refer to that dreadful scene no more. “Whatever may be
done with Ambrose, he has perished. His life is blasted, whether, as
some suppose, he is sent abroad, or whether his punishment is to be
worked out at home. How should he have known better? The only bit of law
he knew, he learned by accident from a newspaper; and when he would have
learned more, the only lesson-book he could get taught him wrong; and it
could never have taught him so wrong, if those which would have
instructed him better had not been kept out of his reach. The judge and
gaoler are to be his teachers now. Those little know what they are about
who take pains,—for any purpose,—to hold men ignorant. If they could
keep the light of the sun from the earth with the thickest of clouds,
they would do mischief enough in making the plants come up sickly, and
the tall trees dwindle away, and rendering every thing fearful and
dismal, wherever we turn: but all this is harmless trifling compared
with the practice of keeping the mind without the light which God has
provided for it. This it is that brings discontent towards God, and bad
passions among men; temptation to guilt to the careless, and long
heart-suffering to the kindest and best; and the fiercest of murders as
the end of all. O, mother! mother!”
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
At line 4.42.18 in ‘The Jerseymen Parting’, the speaker ‘Le Brocq’ is
most likely ‘Durell’, Le Brocq being currently incarcerated.
Some compound words appear both hyphenated and unhyphenated. When the
word is hyphenated on a line break, the hyphen is either retained or
removed depending on the prevalent form elsewhere; e.g. ‘farmhouse(s)’,
‘lawsuit’, ‘shopkeeper(s)’, ‘thunderstorm’, ‘babyhouse’, ‘coast-guard’,
‘fourpenny’, ‘a-piece’, ‘haymakers’, ‘goodwill’, ‘re-appeared’,
‘runaway’, ‘seafowl’, ‘small-clothes’, ‘stone-ware’.
Other errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the work, page and line in the
original.
1.11.28 I shall have them taken care of[f].” Removed.
2.28.3 your[’]s was bad advice. Removed.
2.44.8 that[ that] thou wouldst make haste Removed.
2.65.21 of the church.[.] Removed.
2.88.26 by the tithe-proct[e/o]r Replaced.
3.66.13 as you did at St. Heliers.[’/”] Replaced.
3.94.22 “You can tell him to[ /-]morrow.” Replaced.
3.112.2 putting in metal after g[ua/au]ge Transposed.
3.115.27 the alkaline l[ey/ye] from the copper Transposed.