ground, and began feebly creeping down the bank on his hands and knees.
Dick tried in vain to restrain him. The failing heart was set upon an
object from which death alone could tear it. During this the last hour
of his life this criminal, this common thief, had struggled strenuously
towards an end unpretending enough, but one that was for once not
selfish--had struggled and fought, and received his death-wound, and
struggled on again. His life had been false and base. It cannot be
expected to count for much that in his last moments he was faithful, and
not ignoble. Yet so it was in the end. Edmonstone tried in vain to
restrain him; but with a last extraordinary effort he flung himself
clear, and half crawled, half rolled several yards.
Suddenly Ned Ryan quivered throughout his whole frame. Dick caught him
in his arms, and held him back by main force.
The dying man's glassy gaze was fixed on the red roofs below. For an
instant one long arm was pointed towards them, and a loud clear voice
rang out upon the silent air:
"The township! The township----!"
The cry ended in a choking sob. The arm fell heavily. Edmonstone
supported a dead weight on his breast.
"Pinckney!"
"Yes, yes?"
"God forgive him--it's all over!"
XXIX
ELIZABETH RYAN
Elizabeth Ryan did not return to Gateby after leaving Pound in the
fields between the village and the shooting-box. All that night she
roamed the lanes and meadows like a restless shade. Whither her
footsteps led her she cared little, and considered less.
Though not unconscious of the mechanical act of walking, her sense of
locomotion was practically suspended. A night on the treadmill would
have left upon her an impression of environment no more monotonous than
that which remained to her when this night was spent; and she never once
halted the whole night through.
Her seeing mind held but one image--her husband. In her heart, darting
its poison through every vein, quivered a single passion--violent,
ungovernable anger. The full, undivided force of this fierce passion was
directed against Edward Ryan.
Later--when the flame had gone out, and the sullen glow of stern resolve
remained in its stead--the situation presented itself in the form of
alternatives. Either she must betray her husband, or set him free by
ending her own miserable life. One of these two things must be done, one
left undone. There was no third way now. The third way had been tried;
it should have led to compassion and justice; it had led only to
further cruelty and wrong. One of the remaining ways must now be chosen;
for the woman it little mattered which; they surely converged in death.
At daybreak Elizabeth Ryan found herself in flat, low-lying country. She
looked for the hills, and saw them miles away. From among those hills
she had come. She must have been walking right through the night, she
thought.
She was by no means sure. She only knew that her brain had been terribly
active all through the night--she could not answer for her body. Then,
all at once, a deadly weariness overcame her, and a score of aches and
pains declared themselves simultaneously. Prevented by sheer distraction
from feeling fatigue as it came, by natural degrees, the moment the
mental strain was interrupted the physical strain manifested its results
in the aggregate; Mrs. Ryan in one moment became ready to drop.
She had drifted into a narrow green lane leading to a farmhouse. She
followed up this lane till it ended before a substantial six-barred
gate. She opened the gate and entered the farmyard. She tried the doors
of the outbuildings. A cowhouse was open and empty; one of its stalls
was stacked high with hay; to the top of this hay she climbed, and crept
far back to the wall, and covered her dress with loose handfuls of the
hay. And there Elizabeth Ryan went near to sleeping the clock round.
A hideous dream awoke her at last. She was trembling horribly. She had
seen her husband dead at her feet--murdered at his wife's instigation!
The mental picture left by the dream was so vivid that the unhappy woman
lay long in terror and trembling, not daring to move. Instead of paling
before consciousness and reason, the ghastly picture gained in breadth,
colour, and conviction with each waking minute. He was lying dead at her
feet--her husband--her Ned--the man for love of whom she had crossed the
wide world, and endured nameless hardships, unutterable humiliation. He
was slain by the hand of the man who had led her to him--by the ruthless
murderer, Jem Pound!
She remembered her words to Pound, and her teeth chattered: "Take it,
even if you have to take his life with it!" Those were the very words
she had used in her frenzy, meaning whatever it was that Ned wore upon
his breast. He wore it, whatever it was, near to his heart; he must
value it next to his life. What else could it be but money? Oh, why had
she told Pound? How could passion carry her so far? If her dream was
true--and she had heard of true dreams--then her husband was murdered,
and the guilt was hers.
A low wail of agony escaped her, and for a moment drove her fears into a
new channel. Suppose that cry were heard! She would be discovered
immediately, perhaps imprisoned, and prevented from learning the worst
or the best about her dream, which she must learn at any price and at
once! Filled with this new and tangible dread she buried herself deeper
in the hay and held her breath. No one came. There was no sound but her
own heart's loud beating, and the dripping and splashing of the rain
outside in the yard, and the rising of the wind. She breathed freely
again; more freely than before her alarm. The minutes of veritable
suspense had robbed the superstitious terror of half its power, but not
of the motive half, she must go back and make sure about that dream
before carrying out any previous resolution. Until this was done,
indeed, all antecedent resolves were cancelled.
She crept down from the hay and peeped cautiously outside. She could see
no one. It was raining in torrents and the wind was getting up. With a
shudder she set her face to it, and crossed the yard. At the gate she
stopped suddenly, for two unpleasant facts simultaneously revealed
themselves: she had no idea of the way to Gateby, and she was famishing.
Now to be clear on the first point was essential, and there was nothing
for it but to apply boldly at the farmhouse for the information; as to
the second, perhaps at the farmhouse she might also beg a crust.
"Dear heart!" cried the good wife, answering the timid knock at the
door. "Hast sprung from t'grave, woman?"
"Nay," answered Elizabeth, sadly; "I am only on my way there."
The farmer's wife, a mountain of rosy kindliness, stared curiously at
the pale frightened face before her, and up and down the draggled dress.
"Why, Lord, thou'rt wet and cold; an' I'll be bound thou's had nobbut
hay for thy bed."
With a sudden flood of tears, Elizabeth Ryan confessed where she had
been sleeping all day.
"Nay, nay, honey," said the good woman, a tear standing in her own eye,
"it's nowt--it's nowt. Come in and get thysel' warmed an' dried. We're
having our teas, an' you shall have some, an' all!"
Thus the poor vagrant fell among warm Yorkshire hearts and generous
Yorkshire hands. They gave her food, warmth, and welcome, and pitied her
more than they liked to say. And when, in spite of all protests, she
would go on her way (though the risen wind was howling in the chimney,
and driving the heavy rain against the diamond panes), honest William,
son of the house and soil, brought a great sack and tied it about her
shoulders, and himself set her on the high road for Melmerbridge.
"Ye'll 'ave te go there," said he, "to get te Gaatby. 'Tis six mile from
this, an' Gaatby other fower."
Six miles? That was nothing. So said the strange woman, as she tramped
off in the teeth of the storm; and William, hurrying homeward, wondered
what had made her eyes so bright and her step so brisk all at once. He
asked his parents what they thought, but they only shook their puzzled
heads: they had done nothing out of the way that they knew of; how could
they guess that it had been their lot to show the first human kindness
to a poor forlorn pilgrim from over the seas--the first the poor woman
had met with in all stony-hearted England?
Yet her treatment at the hands of these simple people had lightened the
heart of Elizabeth Ryan, and the terror of her awful dream had softened
it. Her burning rage against her husband was quenched; she thought of it
with shuddering shame. Her wild resolves were thrown to the winds; she
must have been mad when she entertained them. She must have been blind
as well as mad; but now her sight was restored. Yes, now she could see
things in their true light. Now she could see who had caused her
husband's cruelty; who had poisoned him against her--subtly, swiftly,
surely, at their first meeting; who had drugged her, and then shown Ned
his drunken wife at their second meeting; whom she had to thank for all
her misery: the fiend, Jem Pound.
It was true that Ned had treated her heartlessly; but, believing what he
believed of her, could she blame him? She blamed him for listening to
the first whisper against her, from the lips of a monster; but his fault
ended there. He had never heard her in her own defence. He had not so
much as seen her alone. There lay the root of it all: she had been
allowed no chance of explaining, of throwing herself on his compassion.
But now she was going to put an end to all this. She was going to him at
once, and alone. She was going to tell him all: how she had waited
patiently for him at Townsville until the news of his capture drove her
almost frantic; how, in the impulse and madness of the moment, she had
trusted herself to Jem Pound, and followed him, her husband, to England;
how she had followed him for his own sake, in the blindness of her love,
which separation and his life of crime had been powerless to lessen;
how, ever since, she had been in the power of a ruffianly bully, who had
threatened and cajoled her by turns.
And then she would throw herself at Ned's feet, and implore his mercy.
And he, too, would see clearly, and understand, and pity her, and take
her back into his life. Whether that life was bad or good, it alone was
her heart's desire.
A soft smile stole over the haggard face, upon which the wind and the
rain were beating more fiercely every minute. Wind and rain were nothing
to her now; she could not feel them; she was back in Victoria, and the
sky above was dark blue, and the trees on either side the flint-strewn
track were gaunt, grey, and sombre. The scent of the eucalyptus filled
her nostrils. The strokes of two galloping horses rang out loud and
clear on the rough hard road. She was mounted on one of these horses,
Ned on the other. They were riding neck and neck, she and her handsome
Ned--riding to the township where the little iron church was. It was
their marriage morn. She had fled from home for ever.
Surely he loved her then--a little? Yet he had left her, very soon,
without a word or a cause; for weeks she could gather no tidings of him,
until one day news came that rang through the countryside, and was
echoed throughout the colony--news that stamped her new name with
infamy. But had she changed her name, or sunk her identity, or disowned
her husband, as some women might have done? No. She had employed her
woman's wit to hunt her husband down--to watch over him--to warn him
where danger lurked. One night--it stood out vividly in her memory--she
had burst breathlessly into his bivouac, and warned him in the nick of
time: half-an-hour later the armed force found the fires still burning,
but the bushrangers flown. And he had been good to her then; for it was
then that he had given her the money to go to his only relative--a
sister at Townsville; and he had promised in fun to "work up" through
Queensland, some day, and meet her there. Yes, with the hounds of
justice on his heels he had made time to be kind to her then, after a
fashion. It was not much, that amount of kindness, but it would be
enough for her now. After all that she had gone through, she would be
content with something short of love, say even tolerance. She would try
to win the rest, in after years--years when Ned settled down in some
distant country--when Ned reformed. Could he refuse her now so small a
measure of what she gave him without stint? Surely not. It was
impossible. Unless--unless--unless--
What made Elizabeth Ryan clench her drenched cold fingers and draw her
breath so hard? What blotted out the visionary blue skies, tore hope and
fancy to shreds, and roused her to the bleak reality of wind and rain
and the sickening memory of her husband's heartlessness? What, indeed,
but the suggestions of Jem Pound?
She loathed herself for listening to a single word from that polluted
source; yet, as Pound's words came back to her, she listened again to
them all. She thought of the pretty, delicate, pink-and-white woman her
own eyes had seen by the waters of the Thames, with whom she had spoken,
who had dared to offer her money. The thought became a globe of fire in
her brain; and soon the poor woman had worked herself back into a frame
of mind bordering upon that frenzy which had driven her hither and
thither, like a derelict ship at the wind's mercy, through the long
hours of the previous night. The appearance of watery lights through the
storm came not before it was time. Even to Elizabeth Ryan, with hope and
passion wrestling in her breast, there was a certain faint excitement
and satisfaction in reaching a village after a six-mile tramp through
wind, rain, and dusk deepening into night. Besides, if this was
Melmerbridge, she must ask and find out the road to Gateby.
Guided by the lights, she presently reached the north end of the long,
one-sided village street; the long straight stream, now running
turbulently, was on her left as she advanced, and Melmerbridge Bank
straight ahead, at the southern end of the village. An irregular line of
lights marked the houses on the right; to the left, across the beck,
there were no such lights; but a set of church windows--the church being
lit up for evening service--hung gaudily against the black screen of
night; the outline of the church itself was invisible. The deep notes of
an organ rose and fell in the distance, then died away; then suddenly,
as the wayfarer gazed, the stained-glass window disappeared, and Mrs.
Ryan found herself in the midst of a little stream of people who were
coming from the bridge in front of the church to the cottages on the
opposite side of the road.
From one of these people she received the directions she required, but
she noticed that most of them were talking eagerly and excitedly, in a
way not usual among folks fresh from worship, or indeed in a quiet
country village at any time. Little groups formed in the doorways and
kept up an animated conversation. Clearly there was something of
uncommon interest astir. Mrs. Ryan passed on, mildly interested herself.
The last houses of the village were darker. Elizabeth touched their
outer walls with her skirts as she trudged along the narrow uneven
pavement. From one of them came a sound which struck her as an odd sound
for a Sabbath evening--the long, steady sweep and swish of a plane. This
house was a shop; for six parallel threads of light issued from the
chinks of the tall shutters. Through one of these chinks a small boy was
gazing with rapt attention and one eye closed. Mrs. Ryan stopped, and
out of mere curiosity peered through another.
A burly old man was energetically planing a long, wide, roughly-shaped,
hexagonal plank. The shape of the plank was startling.
"What is it he is making?" inquired Mrs. Ryan of the small boy. Perhaps
she could see for herself, and put the question mechanically.
The answer was prompt and short:
"A coffin!"
Mrs. Ryan shuddered and stood still. The urchin volunteered a comment.
"My! ain't it a long 'un! Did ye iver see sich a long 'un, missis?"
He was little Tom Rowntree, the sexton's son and heir, this boy, so he
knew what he was talking about; one day, all being well, he would dig
graves and bury folks himself; he took a profound premature interest in
all branches of the hereditary avocation.
"Who is dead?" asked Mrs. Ryan, in a hard metallic voice.
"Haven't heard tell his name, but 'tis a sooincide, missis--a sooincide!
A gent's been and shot hisself upon the bank there, this afternoon. He's
a-lyin' ower yonder at t' Blue Bell."
"Where is that?"
"Yonder, look--t' last house on this side. It's nigh all dark, it is,
an' no one there 'cept my mother an' Mr. Robisson hisself, an' customers
turned away an' all. That's 'cause Mrs. Robisson she's took the
high-strikes--some people is that weak!"
But there was no listener to these final words of scorn. With a ghastly
face and starting eyes, Elizabeth Ryan was staggering to the Blue Bell
inn.
A square of pale light dimly illumined a window close to the ground to
the left of the door, otherwise the inn was in darkness. Elizabeth Ryan
crouched down, and never took her eyes from that window till the light
was extinguished. Then she heard the door within open and shut, and the
outer door open. A man and a woman stood conversing in low tones on the
steps, the woman's voice broken by sobs.
"'Tisn't that I'm growing old and nervous, Mr. Robisson, and thinkin'
that me own time'll come some day; no, it's not that. But all these
years--and never such a thing to happen in the village before--little
did I think to live to be called in to the likes o' this. And such a
good face as I never seed in living man, poor fellow! You never know
where madness comes in, and that's what it's been, Mr. Robisson. And now
I'm out o' t' room I'm that faint I don't know how to get home."
"Come, come, I'll give you my arm and umbrella across, Mistress
Rowntree."
"But ye've left t' key in t' door?"
"Oh, I'll be back quick enough; it's only a step."
He gave her his arm, and the pair came out together and went slowly up
the village street. In less than five minutes the landlord of the Blue
Bell returned, locked all the doors, and went to bed, leaving the inn in
total darkness.
A quarter of an hour later this total darkness was interrupted; a pale
light glimmered in the window close to the ground to the left of the
door. This light burned some ten or twenty minutes. Just before it was
put out, the window-sash was moved up slowly. Then, when all was once
more in darkness, a figure stepped out upon the sill, leapt lightly to
the ground, and cautiously drew down the sash.
XXX
SWEET REVENGE
Whistling over the hilltops and thundering through the valleys, down
came the wind upon the little lonely house by the roadside; and with the
wind, driving rain; and they beat together upon the walls of that corner
room wherein Alice Bristo lay trembling between life and death.
The surgeon from Melmerbridge pronounced it to be brain fever. He had
found the patient wildly delirious. The case was grave, very grave.
Dangerous? There was always danger with an abnormal temperature and
delirium. Dr. Mowbray stayed until evening and ultimately left his
patient sleeping quietly. He promised to return in the early morning.
The doctor stopped, as he was driving off, to shriek something through
the storm:
"Have you any one who can nurse--among the servants?"
Inquiries were immediately made.
"No," was the answer.
"I'll send over a handy woman from Melmerbridge," said Dr. Mowbray;
crack went his whip, and the gig-wheels splashed away through the mud.
A young man standing at the other side of the road, bareheaded and
soaked to the skin, wondered whether the nurse would be sent at once
that night. Then this young man continued his wild rapid walk up and
down the country road, glancing up every moment at the feeble light that
shone from the casement of that corner room on the upper floor.
Up and down, never pausing nor slackening his speed, fifty paces above
the house and fifty below it, this unquiet spirit strode to and fro in
the wind and the rain, like Vanderdecken on his storm-proof poop.
Once, when opposite the house, he touched the skirts of a woman
crouching under the hedge; but he was not aware of it--he was gazing up
at the window--and, before he passed that spot again the woman was gone.
The woman had crept stealthily across the road and through the open
wicket. She was crouching behind the opposite hedge, on the rough
grass-plot in front of the house. Once more the swinging steps passed
the house and grew faint in the distance. The crouching woman sprang
erect, darted noiselessly up the steps, and grasped the door-handle. She
turned the handle and pushed gently, the door was neither locked nor
bolted; it opened. The woman entered, and closed the door softly behind
her. She stooped, listening. The footsteps passed the house without a
pause or a hitch, as before. She had been neither seen nor heard--from
without. A horrid smile disfigured the woman's livid face. She stood
upright for an instant, her hand raised to her forehead, pausing in
thought.
A lamp was burning low on the table in the passage; its dull light
flickered upon the dark, fierce, resolute face of Elizabeth Ryan.
The dark hair fell in sodden masses about a face livid and distorted
with blind fury, the dark eyes burned like live coals in the dim light,
the cast of the firm wide mouth was vindictive, pitiless; the fingers of
the right hand twitched terribly; once they closed spasmodically upon a
loose portion of the ragged dress, and wrung it so hard that the water
trickled down in a stream upon the mat, and at that moment murder was
written in the writhing face. The left hand was tightly clasped.
Elizabeth Ryan had crept into the chamber of death, in the Blue Bell at
Melmerbridge, during the five minutes' absence of the innkeeper. It was
she who had quitted that room by the window. She had fled wildly over
the moor, maddened by a discovery that scorched up the grief in her
heart, setting fire to her brain, changed in a flash from a bewildered,
heartbroken, forlorn creature to a ruthless frantic vendetta. The
substance of that discovery was hidden in her clasped left hand.
She stood for a brief interval on the mat, then stepped stealthily
forward towards the stairs. A light issued from an open door on the
left, near the foot of the stairs. She peeped in as she passed.
Stretched on a couch lay an old white-haired man, dressed as though it
were mid-day instead of mid-night, in a tweed suit. Though asleep, his
face was full of trouble. Nothing in this circumstance, nor in the
conduct of the man outside walking to and fro in the storm, nor in the
dim lights all over the house at this hour, struck Elizabeth Ryan as
extraordinary. Her power of perception was left her; her power of
inference was gone, except in direct relation to the one hideous
project that possessed her soul. She crept softly up the stairs. They
did not creak. She appreciated their silence, since it furthered her
design.
As below, a light issued from an open door. She approached this door on
tip-toe. A pair of small light shoes, with the morning's dust still upon
them, stood at one side of the mat; someone had mechanically placed them
there. When Elizabeth Ryan saw them her burning eyes dilated, and her
long nervous fingers closed with another convulsive grasp upon the folds
of her skirt.
She crossed the threshold and entered the room. The first thing she saw,
in the lowered light of a lamp, was an old, puckered, wrinkled face just
appearing over a barrier of eiderdown and shawls, and deep-set in an
easy-chair. The brown, wrinkled eyelids met the brown, furrowed cheeks.
The watcher slumbered and slept.
As yet the room wore none of the common trappings of a sick-room: the
illness was too young for that. The book the sick girl had been reading
last night lay open, leaves downward, on the chest of drawers; the
flowers that she had picked on the way to church, to fasten in her
dress, had not yet lost their freshness; the very watch that she had
wound with her own hand last night was still ticking noisily on the
toilet-table. Thus, to one entering the room, there was no warning of
sickness within, unless it was the sight of the queer old sleeping woman
in the great chair by the fireside, where a small fire was burning.