preceding; the joy of the mother softened the anguish of the condemned,
and sometimes when she looked upon her daughter she ceased to despair;
but destiny had not forgotten its claim, and soon its hand pressed
heavily upon its victim; the giant ocean rolled over the body of her
husband, poverty visited the cottage of the widow, and famine’s gaunt
figure was visible in the distance. Oppression came with these, arrears
of rent were demanded, and the landlord was brutal in his anger and
harsh in his language to the sufferer.
Thus goaded, she saw but one thing that could save her--she fled from
her persecutor to the home of her youth, and, leading her little Rachel
by the hand, threw herself into the arms of her people. They received
her with distant kindness, and assured her that she should not want.
In this they kept their promise, but it was all they did for Ruth
and her daughter. A miserable subsistence was given to them, and that
was embittered by distrust, and the knowledge that it was yielded
unwillingly.
Among the villagers, although she was no longer shunned as formerly,
her story was not forgotten. If it had been, her strange beauty, her
sorrow-stamped face, the flashing of her eyes, her majestic stature
and solemn movements, would have recalled it to their recollections.
She was a marked being, and all believed (though each would have
pitied her, had they not been afraid) that her evil destiny was not to
be averted. They declared that she looked like one fated to do some
dreadful deed. They saw she was not one of them, and though they did
not directly avoid her, yet they never threw themselves in her way,
and thus the hapless Ruth had ample leisure to contemplate and grieve
over her fate. One night she sat alone in her little hovel, and, with
many bitter ruminations, was watching the happy sleep of her child,
who slumbered tranquilly on their only bed. Midnight had long passed,
yet Ruth was not disposed to rest. She trimmed her dull light, and
said mentally, ‘Were I not poor such a temptation might not assail
me, riches would procure me deference; but poverty, or the wrongs it
brings, may drive me to this evil. Were I above want it would be less
likely to be. Oh, my child, for your sake would I avoid this doom more
than for mine own, for if it should bring death to me, what will it not
bring to you?--infamy, agony, scorn.’
She wept aloud as she spoke, and scarcely seemed to notice the
singularity (at that late hour) of someone without attempting to open
the door. She heard, but the circumstance made little impression. She
knew that as yet her doom was unfulfilled, and that, therefore, no
danger could reach her. She was no coward at any time, but now despair
had made her brave. She flung the door open, a stranger entered,
without either alarming or disturbing her, and it was not till he had
stood face to face with Ruth, and she discovered his features to be
those of William Morgan, that she sprung up from her seat and gazed
wildly and earnestly upon him. He gave her no time to question.
‘Ruth Tudor,’ said he, ‘behold I come to sue for your pity and mercy.
I have embittered your existence, and doomed you to a terrible lot.
What first was dictated by vengeance and malice became truth as I
uttered it, for what I spoke I believed. Yet, take comfort, some of my
predictions have failed, and why may not this one be false? In my own
fate I have ever been deceived; perhaps I may be equally so in yours.
In the meantime have pity upon him who was your enemy, but who, when
his vengeance was uttered, instantly became your friend. I was poor,
and your scorn might have robbed me of subsistence in danger, and your
contempt might have given me up. Beggared by some disastrous events,
hunted by creditors, I fled from my wife and son because I could no
longer bear to contemplate their suffering. I have sought fortune in
many ways since we parted, and always has she eluded my grasp till last
night, when she rather tempted than smiled upon me. At an idle fair
I met the steward of this estate drunk and stupid, but loaded with
gold. He travelled towards home alone. I could not, did not, wrestle
with the fiend that possessed me, but hastened to overtake him in his
lonely ride. Start not! No hair of his head was harmed by me. Of his
gold I robbed him, but not of his life, though, had I been the greater
villain, I should now be in less danger, since he saw and marked my
person. Three hundred pounds is the result of my deed, but I must keep
it now or die. Ruth, you, too, are poor and forsaken, but you are
faithful and kind, and will not betray me to justice. Save me, and I
will not enjoy my riches alone. You know all the caves in the rocks,
those hideous hiding places, where no foot, save yours, has dared to
tread. Conceal me in one of these till the pursuit be passed, and I
will give you one half my wealth, and return with the other to gladden
my wife and son.’
The hand of Ruth was already opened, and in imagination she grasped the
wealth he promised. Oppression and poverty had somewhat clouded the
nobleness, but not the fierceness of her spirit. She saw that riches
would save her from wrath, perhaps from blood, and as the means to
escape from so mighty an evil she was not unscrupulous respecting a
lesser. Independently of this, she felt a great interest in the safety
of Morgan. Her own fate seemed to hang upon his. She hid the ruffian in
a cave which she had known from her youth, and supplied him with light
and food.
There was a happiness now in the heart of Ruth, a joy in her thoughts
as she sat all the long day upon the deserted settle of her wretched
fireside, to which they had, for many years, been strangers. Many times
during the past years of her sorrow she had thought of Morgan, and
longed to look upon his face, and sit under his shadow, as one whose
presence could preserve her from the evil fate which he himself had
predicted. She had long since forgiven him his prophecy. She believed
he had spoken truth, and this gave her a wild confidence in his
power--a confidence that sometimes thought, ‘If he can foreknow, can he
not also avert?’
And she thought she would deserve his confidence, and support him in
his suffering. She had concealed him in a deep dark cave, hewn far in
the rock, to which she alone knew the entrance from the beach. There
was another (if a huge aperture in the top of the rock might be so
called) which, far from attempting to descend, the peasants and seekers
for the culprit had scarcely dared to look into, so perpendicular,
dark, and uncertain was the hideous descent into what justly appeared
to them a bottomless abyss. They passed over his head in their search
through the fields above, and before the mouth of his den upon the
beach below, yet they left him in safety, though incertitude and fear.
It was less wonderful, the suspicionless conduct of the villagers
towards Ruth, than the calm prudence with which she conducted all
the details relating to her secret. Her poverty was well known, yet
she daily procured a double portion of food, which was won by double
labour. She toiled in the fields for the meed of oaken cake and
potatoes, or she dashed out in a crazy boat on the wide ocean, to
win with the dredgers the spoils of the oyster beds that lie on its
bosom. The daintier fare was for the unhappy guest, and daily did she
wander among the rocks, when the tides were retiring, for the shellfish
which they had flung among the fissures in their retreat, which she
bore, exhausted with fatigue, to her home, and which her lovely child,
now rising into womanhood, prepared for the luxurious meal. It was
wonderful, too, the settled prudence of the young girl, who made no
comment about the food with which she was daily supplied. If she
suspected the secret of her mother she respected it too much to allow
others to discover that she did so.
Many sad hours did Ruth pass in that dark cave, where the man who had
blighted her life lay in hiding; and many times, by conversing with
him upon the subject of her destiny, did she seek to alleviate the
pangs its recollection gave her. But the result of such discussions
were by no means favourable to her hopes. Morgan had acknowledged that
his threat had originated in malice, and that he intended to alarm and
subdue, but not to the extent that he had effected. ‘I know well,’ said
he, ‘that disgrace alone would operate upon you as I wished, for I
foresaw you would glory in the thought of nobly sustaining misfortune.
I meant to degrade you with the lowest. I meant to attribute to you
what I now painfully experience to be the vilest of vices. I intended
to tell you you were destined to be a thief, but I could not utter the
words I had intended, and I was struck with horror at those I heard
involuntarily proceeding from my lips. I would have recalled them, but
I could not. I would have said, “Ruth, I did but jest,” but there was
something which seemed to withhold my speech and press upon my soul,
and a dumb voice whispered in my ears, “As thou hast said shall this
thing be.” But take comfort, Ruth. My own fortunes have ever deceived
me, and doubtlessly ever will, for I feel as if I should one day return
to this cave, and make it my final home.’
He spoke solemnly, and wept; but his companion was unmoved as she
looked on in wonder and contempt at his grief. ‘You know not how to
endure,’ said she to him, ‘and as soon as night shall again fall upon
our mountains I will lead you forth to freedom. The danger of pursuit
is now past. At midnight be ready for the journey, leave the cave, and
ascend the rocks by the path I showed you, to the field in which its
mouth is situated. Wait me there a few moments, and I will bring you
a fleet horse, ready saddled for the journey, for which you must pay,
since I must declare to the owner that I have sold it at a distance,
and for more than its rated value.’
Midnight came, and Morgan waited with trembling anxiety for the welcome
step of Ruth. At length he saw her, and hastily speaking as she
descended the rock:
‘You must be speedy in your movements,’ said she. ‘When you leave me
your horse waits on the other side of this field, and I would have you
hasten, lest something should betray your purpose. But, before you
depart, there is an account to be settled between us. I have dared
danger and privation for you, that the temptations of the poor may not
assail me. Give me my reward, and go.’
Morgan pressed his leather bag containing his gold to his bosom, but
answered nothing. He seemed to be studying some evasion, for he looked
upon the ground, and there was trouble in the working of his lip. At
length he said cautiously, ‘I have it not with me. I buried it, lest it
should betray me, in a field some miles distant. When I leave here I
will dig it up, for I know the exact spot, and send you your portion as
soon as I reach a place of safety.’
Ruth gave him a glance of scorn. She had detected his meanness, and
smiled at his incapacity to deceive. ‘What do you press to your bosom
so earnestly,’ she demanded. ‘Surely you are not the wise man I deemed
you, thus to defraud me. Your friend alone you might cheat, and safely;
but I have been made wretched by you, guilty by you, and your life is
in my power. I could, as you know, easily raise the village, and win
half your wealth by giving you up to justice. But I prefer reward.
Give me my due, therefore, and be gone.’
But Morgan knew too well the value of the metal of sin to yield one
half of it to Ruth. He tried many miserable shifts and lies, and at
last, baffled by the calm penetration of his antagonist, boldly avowed
his intention of keeping all the spoil he had won with so much hazard.
Ruth looked at him with withering contempt. ‘Keep your gold,’ she said.
‘If it can thus harden hearts, I covet not its possession; but there
is one thing you must do, and that before you move a foot. I have
supported you with hard-earned industry--that I give you; more proud,
it would seem, in bestowing than I could be in receiving from such as
you. But the horse that is to bear you hence to-night I borrowed for a
distant journey. I must return with it, or its value. Open your bag,
pay me for it, and go.’
But Morgan seemed afraid to open his bag in the presence of her he had
wronged. Ruth understood his fears; but, scorning vindication of her
principles, contented herself with entreating him to be honest. ‘Be
more just to yourself and me,’ she persisted, ‘the debt of gratitude I
pardon; but, I beseech you, leave me not to encounter the consequence
of having stolen from my friend the animal which is his only means of
subsistence. I pray you not to condemn me to scorn.’
It was of no avail that Ruth humbled herself to entreaties. Morgan
answered not, and while she was yet speaking cast side-long looks
towards the spot where the horse was waiting, and seemed meditating
whether he should not dart from Ruth and escape her entreaties and
demands by dint of speed. Her stern eye detected this purpose, and,
indignant at his baseness, and ashamed of her own degradation, she
sprung suddenly towards him, made a desperate clutch at the leathern
bag, and tore it from his grasp. He made an attempt to recover it,
and a fierce struggle ensued, which drove them both back towards the
yawning mouth of the cave from which he had just ascended to the world.
On its very verge, on its very extreme edge, the demon who had so
long ruled his spirit, now instigated him to mischief, and abandoned
him to his natural brutality. He struck the unhappy Ruth a revengeful
and tremendous blow. At that moment a horrible thought glanced like
lightning through her soul. He was to her no longer what he had been.
He was a robber, ruffian, liar--one whom to destroy was justice, and
perhaps it was he----
‘Villain!’ she cried, ‘you predicted that I was doomed to be a
murderess; are you destined to be my victim?’ She flung him from her
with terrific force, as he stood close to the abyss, and the next
instant heard him dash against its sides, as he was whirled headlong
into the darkness.
It was an awful feeling, the next that passed over the soul of
Ruth Tudor, as she stood alone in the pale, sorrowful moonlight,
endeavouring to remember what had chanced. She gazed on the purse, on
the chasm, wiped the drops of agony from her heated brow, and then,
with a sudden pang of recollection, rushed down to the cavern. The
light was still burning, as Morgan had left it, and served to show her
the wretch extended helpless beneath the chasm. Though his body was
crushed, the bones splintered, and his blood was on the cavern’s sides,
he was yet living, and raised his head to look upon her as she darkened
the narrow entrance in her passage. He glared upon her with the visage
of a demon, and spoke like a fiend in pain. ‘You have murdered me!’ he
said, ‘but I shall be avenged in all your life to come. Deem not that
your doom is fulfilled, that the deed to which you are fated is done.
In my dying hour I know, I feel, what is to come upon you. You are yet
again to do a deed of blood!’
‘Liar!’ shrieked the infuriated victim.
‘I tell you,’ he gasped, ‘your destiny is not yet fulfilled. You will
yet commit another deed of horror. You will slay your own daughter. You
are yet doomed to be a double murderess!’
She rushed to him, but he was dead.
Ruth Tudor stood for a moment by the corpse, blind, stupefied, deaf,
and dumb. In the next she laughed aloud, till the cavern rang with
her ghastly mirth, and many voices mingled with and answered it. But
the voices scared her, and in an instant she became stolidly grave.
She threw back her dark locks with an air of offended dignity, and
walked forth majestically from the cave. She took the horse by his
rein, and led him back to the stable. With the same unvarying calmness
she entered her cottage, and listened to the quiet breathings of her
sleeping daughter. She longed to approach her nearer, but some new
and horrid fear restrained her, and held her in check. Suddenly,
remembrance and reason returned, and she uttered a shriek so loud and
shrill that her daughter sprung from her bed, and threw herself into
her arms.
It was in vain that the gentle Rachel supplicated her mother to find
rest in sleep.
‘Not here,’ she muttered, ‘it must not be here; the deep cave and the
hard rock, these shall be my resting-place; and the bed-fellow, lo! now
he awaits my coming.’ Then she would cry aloud, clasp her Rachel to her
beating heart, and as suddenly, in horror, thrust her from it.
The next midnight beheld Ruth Tudor in the cave, seated upon a point
of rock, at the head of the corpse, her chin resting upon her hands,
gazing earnestly upon the distorted face. Decay had already begun
its work, and Ruth sat there watching the progress of mortality, as
if she intended that her stern eye should quicken and facilitate its
operation. The next night also beheld her there, but the current of her
thoughts had changed, and the dismal interval which had passed appeared
to be forgotten. She stood with her basket of food.
‘Will you not eat!’ she demanded; ‘arise, strengthen yourself for your
journey; eat, eat, sleeper; will you never awaken? Look, here is the
meat you love’; and as she raised his head and put the food to his lips
the frail remnant of mortality remained dumb and rigid, and again she
knew that he was dead.
It was evident to all that a shadow and a change was over the senses
of Ruth; till this period she had been only wretched, but now madness
was mingled with her grief. It was in no instance more apparent than
in her conduct towards her beloved child; indulgent to all her wishes,
ministering to all her wants with a liberal hand, till men wondered
from whence she derived the means of indulgence, she yet seized every
opportunity to send her from her presence. The gentle-hearted Rachel
wept at her conduct, yet did not complain, for she believed it the
effect of the disease that had for so many years been preying upon her
soul. Ruth’s nights were passed in roaming abroad, her days in the
solitude of her hut; and even this became painful when the step of her
child broke upon it. At length she signified that a relative of her
husband had died and left her wealth, and that it would enable her to
dispose of herself as she had long wished; so, leaving Rachel with her
relatives, she retired to a hut upon a lonely heath, where she was less
wretched, because there were none to observe her awful grief.
In many of her ravings she had frequently spoken darkly of her crime,
and her nightly visits to the cave; and more frequently still she
addressed some unseen thing, which she asserted was for ever at her
side. But few heard these horrors, and those who did called to mind the
early prophecy and deemed them the workings of insanity in a fierce
and imaginative mind. So thought also the beloved Rachel, who hastened
daily to visit her mother, but not now alone, as formerly. A youth of
the village was her companion and protector, one who had offered her
worth and love, and whose gentle offers were not rejected. Ruth, with
a hurried gladness, gave her consent, and a blessing to her child; and
it was remarked that she received her daughter more kindly and detained
her longer at the cottage when Evan was by her side than when she went
to the gloomy heath alone. Rachel herself soon made this observation,
and as she could depend upon the honesty and prudence of him she loved,
she felt less fear at his being a frequent witness of her mother’s
terrific ravings. Thus all that human consolation was capable to afford
was offered to the sufferer by her sympathising children.
But the delirium of Ruth Tudor appeared to increase with every nightly
visit to the secret cave of blood; some hideous shadow seemed to follow
her steps in the darkness and sit by her side in the light. Sometimes
she held strange parley with this creation of her frenzy, and at
others smiled upon it in scornful silence; now her language was in the
tones of entreaty, pity, and forgiveness; anon it was the burst of
execration, curses, and scorn. To the gentle listeners her words were
blasphemy; and, shuddering at her boldness, they deemed, in the simple
holiness of their own hearts, that the Evil One was besetting her, and
that religion alone could banish him. Possessed by this idea, Evan one
day suddenly interrupted her tremendous denunciations upon her fate
and him who, she said, stood over her to fulfil it, with imploring her
to open the book which he held in his hand, and seek consolation from
its words and its promises. She listened, and grew calm in a moment;
with an awful smile she bade him open and read at the first place which
should meet his eye: ‘From that, the word of truth, as thou sayest, I
shall know my fate; what is there written I will believe.’ He opened
the book and read:
‘“Whither shall I go from Thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy
presence? If I go up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in
hell, Thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in
the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and
Thy right hand shall hold me.”’
Ruth laid her hand upon the book. ‘It is enough; its words are truth;
it has said there is no hope, and I find comfort in my despair. I have
already spoken thus in the secrecy of my heart, and I know that He will
be obeyed; the unnamed sin must be----’
Evan knew not how to comfort, so he shut up his Bible and retired;
and Rachel kissed the cheek of her mother as she bade her a tender
good-night. Another month, and she was to be the bride of Evan, and she
passed over the heath with a light step, for the thought of her bridal
seemed to give joy to her mother. ‘We shall all be happy then,’ said
the smiling girl, as the youth of her heart parted from her hand for
the night; ‘and heaven kindly grant that happiness may last.’
The time appointed for the marriage of Rachel Tudor and Evan Edwards
had long passed away, and winter had set in with unusual sternness,
even on that stormy coast, when, during a land tempest, on a dark
November afternoon, a stranger to the country, journeying on foot, lost
his way in endeavouring to find a short route to his destination, over
stubble fields and meadow lands, by following the footmarks of those
who had preceded him. The stranger was a young man, of a bright eye
and a hardy look, and he went on buffeting the elements, and buffeted
by them, without a thought of weariness or a single expression of
impatience. Night descended upon him as he walked, and the snowstorm
came down with unusual violence, as if to try the temper of his mind,
a mind cultivated and enlightened, though cased in a frame accustomed
to hardships, and veiled by a plain, almost rustic exterior. The
storm roared loudly above him, the wind blowing tremendously, raising
the new-fallen snow from the earth, which mingling with that which
fell, raised a shroud about his head which bewildered and blinded the
traveller, who, finding himself near some leafless brambles and a few
clustered bushes of the mountain broom, took shelter under them to
recover his senses and reconnoitre his position. ‘This storm cannot
last long,’ he mused, ‘and when it slackens I shall hope to find my
way to shelter and comfort.’ In this hope he was not mistaken. The
tempest abated, and, starting once more on his journey, he saw some
distance ahead what looked like a white-washed cottage, standing
solitary and alone on the miserable heath which he was now traversing.
Full of hope of a shelter from the storm, and lit onwards by a light
that gleamed like a beacon from the cottage window, the stranger trod
cheerily forwards, and in less than half an hour arrived at the white
cottage, which, from the low wall of loose lime-stones by which it was
surrounded, he judged to be, as he had already imagined, the humble
residence of some poor tenant of the manor. He opened the little
gate, and was proceeding to knock at the door, when his steps were
arrested by a singular and unexpected sound. It was a choral burst of
many voices, singing slowly and solemnly that magnificent dirge of the
Church of England, the 104th Psalm. The stranger loved music, and the
touching melody of that beautiful air had an instant effect upon his
feelings. He lingered in solemn and silent admiration till the strains
had ceased; he then knocked gently at the door, which was instantly and
courteously opened to his inquiry.