THE COLONEL GETS HIS QUIETUS.
I suppose it must be inferred that John Beacham _was_ slow, for
certainly the Colonel’s revelation took him entirely by surprise. For a
few moments that feeling, joined to one of extreme anger and contempt,
kept him silent, and then he said, in a tone which Norcott, hardened as
he was, found it difficult to bear patiently,
“I should never have thought that a man would have found it so easy to
own himself a villain; for you are a villain, Colonel Norcott, whether
you are, or are not--what I imagine you mean to imply--the father--” and
his big honest heart throbbed as though it would have burst its
bonds--“of my wife.”
“I am her father, as surely as we stand here together under God’s
heaven,” Norcott said almost solemnly; “and, being her father, I have
perhaps some claim to be treated civilly. I can excuse a good deal from
a man in your situation, a little struck on a heap, too, as you must
have been, but I can’t allow of any bad language; and if you attempt
anything of the sort again,” he went on passionately, and losing sight,
in his indignation at what he considered John’s insolence, of his own
interests, “why, you will have to be taught how to conduct yourself
before gentlemen. In the mean time, I have only to say--”
“You will say nothing, sir, till I have spoken--nothing till I have told
you my mind about your behaviour in this miserable business! You think,
perhaps, because forsooth you call yourself a gentleman, that I am to be
glad, proud even maybe, of this--this connection. But I swear to you, by
my honour as a man, that I am nothing of the kind; nay, so far am I from
that,” and he drew himself up, and set his strong white teeth firmly
together, “that I would rather know my wife to be the daughter of the
poorest man who walks the earth, if so be he was an honest one, than the
child of such a gentleman as you--one whose name is a byword for
profligacy and dishonour, and whose blood is black with the taint of sin
and shame!”
He was blind with passion, and half maddened by a sense of the dire
disgrace that had fallen upon the wife of whom he was both so proud and
fond. The object, however, of that tremendous vituperation was not one
to accept so bitter an affront with calmness. Though slight in
appearance, he possessed considerable muscular power, and, like many of
his sex, the sense of being endowed with personal vigour above the
average lent the impulse to revenge himself for personal indignity with
a blow. Already his hand, clenched and rigid, was raised to strike the
man of low degree, who had so insolently abused and braved him, when
John Beacham, whose blood was at boiling-point, seeing the action,
quicker than thought intercepted the blow, and with his thick ash-stick
hit his adversary a blow upon the head that would have felled an ox.
The man--Honor’s father (John thought of _that_ when it was too
late)--sank to the ground, as if he had been shot through the brain, and
lay there--it was an awful sight to his assailant--without sense or
motion. In a moment, every angry feeling hushed, and with a terrible
dread at his heart that he had done a deed never in the course of the
longest life to be repaired, John bent over the man whom he had so
lately despised and hated, and laying his hand upon the breast of the
unconscious profligate, sought anxiously if any precious signs of life
were yet remaining there.
To John Beacham--a man tender-hearted in his softer moments as a
woman--to one who, like the good-natured, simple-hearted farmer, had
gone through life at peace with all men, and with a conscience void of
offence towards God and towards his neighbour, it was no light thing the
sight of that apparently lifeless form lying prone upon the greensward,
stretched there--killed, perhaps--by _his_ impetuous hand! Pale as a
corpse he lay there--that well-dressed, overbearing London gentleman,
who so lately--God forgive him!--had boasted of his besetting sin. His
fair hair--it was the colour of Honor’s, and the thought that it was so
flashed through John Beacham’s mind even in that, to him, unparalleled
moment of horror and suspense--his fair hair, which made him ever appear
so much younger than his years, lay dank and wet over his cheek, and was
matted down over the left temple by the life-blood that was slowly
oozing through a ghastly wound. At the sight, all poor John’s presence
of mind deserted him. He lived in peaceable times, and in a peaceable
parish, so that his experience of such ugly gashes was extremely
limited. In Colonel Norcott’s livid colour and in that sluggishly
dripping purple gore he read, as it were, a sentence of death, and his
blood ran cold at the sight.
“Dead! My God!” he exclaimed frantically; “and I, Heaven forgive me!
have killed him!”
With a vague instinct, desperate as seemed the case, of seeking aid, he
was rushing away from the fatal spot, when a groan from the wounded man
arrested his steps.
In a moment he was by his victim’s side again. If the apparently dying
man would but give signs of life, would only recover sufficiently to say
that John was not a murderer by _malice prepense_, the latter felt he
could freely forgive the past. Once more he leant anxiously over the
prostrate form, and once more counted the feeble pulsations of the
faintly-beating heart, and this time not wholly without finding comfort;
for, after a few more minutes, the head of the prostrate man was slowly
raised, and he stared round him with a stony and bewildered gaze.
“You are better, sir--I am sure you are,” John whispered eagerly. “I am
sorry--so very sorry I hit so hard--”
“Hush! Fetch a doctor--will you--and--the girl;” after jerking forth
which few words (for he paused between each, and seemed to speak with
difficulty) Colonel Norcott fell back again to all appearance inanimate.
John never hesitated for a moment as to the propriety of obeying these
urgent--for aught he knew, dying--behests. His own conscience was so
sorely smiting him for that deed of blood, that any act of reparation,
any deed of penance, however painful, which could have been imposed upon
him, he would have cheerfully undertaken.
The first persons whom he chanced to meet, while hurrying in search of
medical aid, were his mother and his wife. Frightened by his white face
and agitated manner, they stopped and questioned him, John only finding
breath to reply incoherently,
“For the love of God, don’t hinder me! I’m going as fast as I can for a
doctor for Colonel Norcott.”
“But what _has_ happened? What is the matter?” persisted the scared
women, who felt instinctively that something more than a common accident
to a man whom he disliked had so disturbed John’s usually placid
temperament.
“The matter!” repeated John wildly, while he hurried on even faster than
before. “The matter is, that he is dying, and that I have killed him!
Now be quiet, both of you, and don’t make it worse by screaming. I
didn’t mean to kill him--you don’t suppose that--I might almost say,
though I’m not going to--that it was an accident, and--but I
remember--I’m losing my head I think--he asked for you, Honor--wished to
see you before he died.”
“Me! What can I do? O, John--”
“Ah, yes! You don’t know--God forgive me for it all, and for hating him
as I did! Mother--yes, that’s the best way--you walk on sharp, and send
the first lad you meet for Mr. Kempshall, and bring back people to help,
and brandy--anything, while I say a word or two of this to Honor.”
The old lady went her ways unwillingly enough, seeing it was only
natural that she could crave to hear John’s secret; nevertheless, there
was consolation in the thought that she was the bearer of exciting news,
and she stepped out briskly towards the point in the distance where the
pleasure-seekers, intent on their own amusement, remained in utter
ignorance of the deed of blood that had been done, as it were, within a
stone’s throw of them. Happily for the worthy woman’s peace of mind, the
idea of any blame being attached to her son never occurred to her for a
moment. She was too old for the fixed beliefs of years to be rooted out
without difficulty and labour from the soil in which they had grown and
flourished. Mrs. Beacham had not known her well-beloved boy through so
many years of close and uninterrupted intercourse as a just and humane,
as well as a God-fearing, man, to have her faith so easily shaken now.
John’s self-accusation, therefore, passed away unheeded on the summer
air, or was only remembered as an evidence of strong excitement very
natural in times of sudden danger and distress, when the nerves are
overstrung, and words bereft of sense rise, as it were, spontaneously to
the lips.
Meanwhile John, after drawing Honor’s arm within his own, hastily
retraced his steps, she keeping pace with him with difficulty, to the
shady glen among the tall laurel-bushes where Honor’s guilty father lay
slowly struggling back to life.
“What is it, John? Do speak--I’m so frightened. Why must I go with you
to see this poor man? I would rather not. You will think me a great
coward; but indeed, indeed, unless I can do him good, I would far rather
not go with you.”
“But you _may_ do him good, Honor,” said John, stopping for a moment and
looking her steadily in the face. “This is not a matter of choice, my
dear, but of duty. God knows I would not willingly bring you face to
face with this man, but--listen quietly, Honor--this is no time for
nerves and foolishness. I have just heard, pet, that he is--your father,
Honor, and--”
“My father!” she said with a gasp, “and he is dying! And you said it was
you that killed him! O, John!”
They were the only words she uttered, but the sting of their reproach
smote the heart of the unhappy husband, as, with Honor’s arm still
linked in his, the two, quite mutely now, hastened their steps over the
closely-shaven turf.
At last--the way had seemed very long, though in fact it was not more
than three hundred yards in length--they reached their goal. Terribly
still and silent--a silence that could be felt--the place seemed to
both, as, parting the light sprays of the branching evergreens, John
Beacham opened the way for his pale wife to enter on the dismal scene.
To his infinite relief, he perceived that his late antagonist had raised
himself on his elbow, and though fearfully pale and wan, gave evident
tokens of still belonging to the land of the living. John, leading the
trembling Honor by the hand, drew her forward to his side.
“You have sworn to me that she is your child,” he said solemnly, “and
may God forgive you if you have told an honest man a lie!”
Shuddering from head to foot, and utterly bewildered by such a rapid
succession of emotions, Honor could only sink upon her knees, and press
silently the delicate white hand of him whom she had so lately been
taught to regard as her parent.
A sickly smile flitted over the Colonel’s face, and he made a feeble
effort to speak.
“Say nothing; _I_ shall say nothing,” was all that John, who listened
with eagerness unutterable for more, could distinctly catch. Honor,
seated on the turf behind him, lay the pale expressive head of her dying
father on her breast. Quite still and motionless he rested there,
apparently unconscious; but what man of mortal birth could divine the
thoughts which might be dimly floating through that deadened and
bewildered brain? It might be that visions of the long-ago past--the
past when he was young and innocent, and repeating his simple prayer
beside his mother’s knee--came back to him in that dismal hour; or, more
likely still, was it that the white ghastly face of the girl whom he had
_murdered_--not directly, it is true, for he had never lifted a hand
against her life, but whom he had as surely slain as though he had
“drugged her posset,” or fired a bullet through her brain--was it that
the livid face of Winifred Moriarty came back to him from the silent
grave, and filled his soul with the dark and nameless terrors of
remorse?
“He is not dead; his heart beats!” John said in a hoarse whisper, as he
stood near in speechless misery; but Honor only shook her head, and the
time seemed terribly long to both before the sound of hushed voices and
of rapidly-advancing footsteps gave token that help was at last at hand.
In a few more moments, Dr. Kempshall, followed closely by the crowd,
which on similar occasions never _will_ consent to remain in the
background, was examining the awkward wound, the tidings of which had
spread consternation through the length and breadth of the well-filled
grounds of Danescourt.