Abel fled from the presence of those who seemed to him his enemies and
persecutors in a state of mind impossible to describe. The excitement in
him had risen beyond the bounds of endurance. All power of resistance
was over, along with all possibility of making a stand against evil
fortune. He was not bad enough for his _rôle_. He could lie by
concealment, and by inference, but not directly and in so many words;
and the utter self-abandonment and unspeakable humiliation of his flight
meant more than mere discovery: it meant complete moral ruin and
downfall. Nothing but the entire giving in and relinquishment of every
hope, the sense that he had no further step to take, no expedient, no
way of escape, could have overwhelmed all his powers so dismally and so
completely. For one moment only he had stood at bay, seeing as through a
mist the sudden lightening and darkening of the faces round
him--lightening of understanding, darkening of disapproval: he felt both
to his very heart with a horrible anguish beyond all experience. He had
been ashamed of his low condition, of his peasant birth, of his homely
family, and this shame had made him do ignoble things; but he was not
all ignoble. A strong perception, when too late, of the simple truth
which might have saved him, contended in his mind with the bitterness of
his shame and the rage of his despair. No possibility of anything which
could be done to sot him right suggested itself to his frantic soul. It
was all over: there was no longer any way of repentance, any
rehabilitation for him. The weakness of his nature had found him out.
Farewell everything--love, friendship, honour, credit! He would live no
longer among the people who had found him out; he would not look them in
the face again. He darted into the woods, running at full speed, not
knowing where he went; anywhere, only to escape from them, only to avoid
the look of them. Oh, cruel judges! oh, terrible tribunal! could he ever
flee far enough to escape from it, to forget the look in their cruel
eyes?
These harsh judges from whom Abel fled had let him go in the first
shock, obeying that impulse of indignation which is so natural at the
moment of a discovery, but so often repented of afterwards. Mary had
stood aghast in her surprise, incapable of a word, and it was only when
he was gone that compunctions woke in her.
"Oh, Roger! go after him," she cried, "go after him. Do you remember
that he saved your life?"
Featherstonhaugh laughed out. He, too, was excited and uncomfortable
after the other event of the afternoon, and this was a way of relieving
his feelings.
"His knowledge of the place stood the fellow in stead. I thought so at
the time," he cried. "To think he should have taken us in for all this
time!"
Mary turned upon him with a keen glance of indignation. His laugh jarred
upon her nerves. "Go, Roger, go," she cried; "if you do not go I will.
Don't let him fall into despair: he saved your life."
"Whoever goes it must certainly not be you," said Featherstonhaugh in a
low tone, catching at her sleeve.
Mary had no thought of going. She put up her hands to her eyes, crying
in spite of herself.
"I think I hear him laugh as he did then," she said. "Oh, poor wretch!
will no one go after him? will no one have pity on him? Oh, Mr Weston, I
hope we may not all repent this day's work."
The vicar himself was very much discomposed.
"I did it for the best," he said--"I did it for the best."
The only person who kept his composure was Featherstonhaugh, whose ill
angel evidently had the upper hand for that unhappy day.
"Here is a great piece of work," he said, "for the unmasking of a
wretched impostor. For my part, I suspected him from the first. As for
saving Roger's life, it was not much after all--any child could have
done it who knew which were the safe places. But he may have other
claims upon your brother," he added--"claims you would scarcely
understand."
"Do you mean to insult me before my father and sister?" cried Roger,
making a stride forward, crimson with rage and indignation.
His opponent looked at him with exasperating calm.
"Is there any need for heroics?" he said. "I have no intention of
insulting you; but it might be well to explain----"
"Oh, lads, lads," cried old Mr Weston; "what is this quarrelling
about?--you that ought to be brothers. Hold your hands, and hold your
tongues, you foolish----"
"I think there is some mistake," said the old squire. "Sir Richard
forgets himself, and so do you, Roger. Go after that unhappy young man.
Let him go to his family--that is the best place for him; but tell him
that if he likes to come to me in the library at any time, I will be
glad to see a man of his information. Learning is of no family," said Mr
Ridley, with a wave of his hand. He was the greatest aristocrat of them
all, but he had a sense of the fitness of things.
"If you have such an impostor back in the house, sir, I shall desire
that Mary at least may not be exposed to the chance of meeting him,"
said Featherstonhaugh.
"Oh, come, after all," cried Charley Landale, "Murray's no impostor. He
said nothing about his people--heaps of fellows say nothing about their
people. His people don't matter to us; but he's no impostor, no more
than I am, or you, Featherstonhaugh. We would both sing small enough in
Oxford when Murray's there."
"And Sir Richard will excuse me," said the squire, with a stiff bow, "if
I say that I can take care of my daughter. Mary, it will be best for you
to retire; and, Roger, I have asked you to do something for me."
"I am going, sir," said his son, gloomily; but he went with reluctance,
looking back when he reached the door. "You know where to find me,
Featherstonhaugh?"
And Featherstonhaugh laughed. The whole party instinctively threw
themselves between the two young men--the one red with fury, the other
cool, with all the exasperation of which scorn and insult are capable.
"I will go with you, Roger," said the old vicar, hastily. "Perhaps I
have sinned against my brother. But no--no, I would but hamper you. Be
you the messenger of mercy, and God bless you, my boy! Go! go! before it
is too late."
Thus he was pushed out of the room, Charley Landale going after him.
"I'll not leave him," the good-natured fellow said quickly in Mary's ear
as he passed.
Featherstonhaugh made no attempt to follow. He waited almost
ostentatiously to give the other full time to be out of the way, and
then he went home.
But neither Roger nor his companion could find any trace of Murray. No
one had seen him or could discover where he had gone. Charley Landale
went home, disconsolate and feeling half-guilty, to watch and wait for
his friend's return, and to give what account of it he could to his
family, such as would least prejudice them against their visitor, though
even the little he said threw the house into confusion and agitation
indescribable. The girls cried over poor Mr Murray; the kind mother,
half-horrified at the risk her daughters had run of perhaps falling in
love with a nobody, and half-sorry for the nobody himself, whose
"feelings" must have been terribly "hurt," sat and talked it over,
neglecting the dressing-bell, and scarcely conscious even of dinner.
Dinner! ought they to wait for their guest, who had never come back?
Charley went out wandering about the grounds, looking for him; and even
old Mr Landale himself, though indignant with "the fellow" at first, had
come to be anxious too, and stared from the only window that commanded
the road. But Murray never came. They ate their dinner at last when it
was cold, and everything was wretched, listening to every sound outside,
and starting at every footstep as if it was one of themselves who was in
deadly peril and trouble. When night came, Charley, good fellow, would
not go to bed, but sat and dozed, keeping a light burning in the window
which was visible from the road. But, notwithstanding all their cares
for him, and all the sympathy and kindness that dictated them, Murray
never appeared; His things lay about his room as he had left them when
he went out, light of heart, expecting to return for dinner; but he
himself entered these hospitable doors no more.
The object of all these anxieties lurked somewhere among the woods in
one of the shady nooks he had known when he was a boy, and which
probably no one but himself and his old rustic companions knew, in the
very madness of misery, while the daylight lasted. He hid himself like
the first sinners--he could not bear the calm eye of the day, the cold
unpitying light, that would show him and point him out to the scrutiny
of men. He lay thus panting on the earth, hidden by the bushes, his mind
and all his being in so wild a turmoil that, after a while, the very
cause of it got obscure in his mind, and he knew only that he was a
fugitive, heart-broken, ruined, and disgraced, without knowing why. He
had no sooner reached a covert in the copse than there seemed to gleam
before him another, better hiding-place, a cool nook by a little stream,
where nobody could ever find him, where he could have a draught of water
when he pleased, and the trickle of the brook to bear him company. As
soon as it was dark he made his way out of the chase, and fled along the
most unfrequented paths, under hedgerows and across fields, to reach
this place. The country was very still, Sunday night, no one about, no
one stirring anywhere. Here and there he made a detour to escape the
lighted windows of a roadside cottage, whence some one might look out
and see him: sometimes shrank aside into a ditch or under a tree when he
saw some solitary passenger in the distance--but met no one, saw no one,
and at last came to the shelter he had thought of. It was deep down
among thick brushwood, heather, and whins, and young birch-trees, by the
side of a little stream which flowed from the hills to the lake. The
ground was damp, but he did not care. He dipped his burning brow in the
stream, and drank long draughts of it. This gave him a little relief, a
little physical ease; and the walk had been long, and he was unused to
so much exertion. Finally, he fell asleep, with his head, like Jacob's,
on a stone. The shock he had sustained seemed to take from Abel all
consciousness of any claims upon him or duties to the outside world. He
remembered nothing about the Landales, thought nothing of where he was
to go when the morning should come, again betraying him. He thought
indeed of no morning, only of safety from some immediate danger, though
he could not tell what that was.
It was a very lonely place, but abounding with wild creatures--rabbits
and squirrels, every kind of grasshopper and harmless insect,
water-rats, moorfowl, and myriads of existences too small for names. He
was woke by them as he lay, early--very early, before any human thing
was stirring. He had slept feverishly, by intervals, through the night,
and he woke up to a less confused sense of his misery in the morning.
Gradually it broke upon him as the light came disclosing the landscape,
creeping on and on. Oh, the horror of the remembering, the misery of
shame, the intolerable sense of weakness, wrong, resentment, and
impotence! Why was it so? Why was he born a cotter's son? Why was it a
disgrace to him? How horrible! that he should be banished from the
company of men, driven out into the wilds, aching every nerve of him,
body and soul, miserable, abandoned, troubled, all because he was a
cotter's son! Oh, wrong at which earth and heaven should cry out! Abel
was not capable of realising that nothing but his own falsehood, his own
cowardice, could have made his birth a shame to him--he was far beyond
such an exercise of reason. He looked down from among his ferns and
bushes to where the peaceful house of the Landales, where he should have
been sleeping now in safety but for this, lay among the trees, and
beyond it, on the banks of the shining water, saw the old Castle, whence
he had been driven out, "to eat grass with the beasts of the field."
That was what the old Eastern potentate had been sentenced to: was it to
be _his_ fate too? Somehow it gave the poor fugitive, half-distraught, a
kind of forlorn comfort to remember that old story. His thoughts went
back to the old Bible lessons he remembered long ago. What had the king
done to have such a fate? and what had _he_ done? But it gave him a
little ease to realise that this had happened to some one else before.
And where was he to go? He could not show his face in this familiar
place, which had again grown so dear. He would go back--back to his
lonely rooms in Oxford, where he ought to be safe, he thought. But how
to get there, how to stir in that garish, lavish day, which flooded
every dark corner with light, so that the water-newts and earth insects
had much ado to get themselves into some covert place, and how was he to
walk unseen, a man? He was faint for want of food, aching with the
unusual exposure, his clothes wet and torn, his hat he did not know
where, his head throbbing and buzzing and all confused. But yet he might
have come round out of the painful bewilderment he was in; his thoughts
began to take a little shape, his mind began to occupy itself with a
practical question--how to get home unseen, how to get to the road and
the railway, and go back whence he had come. All might have come again
to something like nature--nature sore and bleeding and wounded to the
heart, but yet able to command herself, able to be restored.
But just as he had worked to this hopeful point, a jar and rustling in
the branches woke every pulse in his frame again. Who was it? He peered
through his covert with his bloodshot eyes, and at first saw nothing.
Then gradually he distinguished something moving among the copsewood and
tall bushes of heather. Who was it? What was it? A man, coming towards
his hiding-place, pushing his way through the trees, leaping across the
rivulets in the bog, here sinking in the marshy places, then
reappearing, coming ever nearer and nearer. Abel stretched up across his
little stream to watch this advancing figure, fascinated. Was it some
one in search of him? Then he sat down, pulling the heather and
brushwood over him to escape detection. The sounds came on, then
stopped, quite close,--so close that Abel felt his very breathing would
betray him. "Are you there, Ridley?" said a voice close to his ear. "So
you have kept tryst. I scarcely expected you would. Get up, wherever you
are, and come out." Then, after a pause, in an angry tone he added, "Is
this a time for fooling? Come out, wherever you are. I can't wait here."
Abel was like one of the branches quivering over him, one moment blown
this way, another that way, as different impulses swept across him. He
had covered himself with the bushes, shrinking into the very earth for
safety. Now, with a sudden change of idea, he sprang out from his lair,
suddenly confronting Featherstonhaugh with his wild looks and haggard
face. "My God!" cried the new-comer, springing backward in
consternation and alarm. He did not recognise at first the extraordinary
figure. Abel was very pale, his head was uncovered, his eyelids red as
blood, his clothes all wet and soiled and torn. With a sudden fierceness
he pursued after the other, keeping his wild eyes fixed upon him with a
glare of passion and madness in them. No wonder Featherstonhaugh was
afraid. "Is it you, Murray?" he said, faltering. "I--beg your pardon. I
thought it was Ridley; he was to meet me here, this morning, about the
boundary line. The two estates--march. We had--words yesterday, and I
scarcely expected him. I am afraid you have not spent a--comfortable
night?"
"Yes, I have," said Abel, hoarsely; "better than among men--better than
with the false and cruel----"
"You take it too seriously, I am sure," said the other. "What does it
matter who is a man's father I We are the child of our own actions,
nowadays; only, if you will do me a favour, don't go any more to the
Castle. It would do you no good, and it might--do harm."
"Are you my master?" said Abel.
"No, no. Don't be excited. I ask it as a favour. Don't go. I am not
taking ground as your superior, Murray."
"Are you--my superior?"
"Well, yes," said the other, with a careless laugh, growing less afraid,
and feeling that in his coolness he had the upper hand; "we need not
inquire into that, need we? Go home, like a good fellow, and get some
breakfast. You must be cramped, lying out all night--have you been there
all night?"
"Who are you that speak to me as if I were your slave? Do you think
I--will do what _you_ tell me--You! Who are you that give me orders?"
"Come," said the other; "Murray, you know this will never do. You've
been drinking. Go home."
"I have been--what?" shrieked the unhappy young man.
"Don't make it more evident than it is. I said drinking," said
Featherstonhaugh. "Now go home."
But Abel sprang at his throat before he was aware. It was an impulse,
like the other. A sudden flash and tingle of passion, and then a spring.
Featherstonhaugh fell like a stone among the brushwood and broken stones
of the hillside, with the grip of the madman on his neck. He was a
madman now. The wavering of the mental balance, which might have been
restored an hour ago, was over for ever. This second assault concluded
the struggle. With no enforcement of artificial restraint, nothing but
the two, in face of each other, on the lonely hillside, passion leaped
into frenzy in a moment. He gripped his victim by the throat and there
was a long and horrible struggle; then, when the other lay still and
ceased to resist, Abel, laughing wildly, got upon his knees and struck
at the helpless, prostrate figure, beating him into the bog, cruelly
repeating blow on blow, blow on blow--long after all blows were
needless. He kept on with a convulsive motion, rising with every stroke,
like a child when it imitates the action of riding, showering down his
blows, with a stick which he had picked up--with a stone, with his
hands--in a fury which by-and-by degenerated into horrible, senseless
play, and monotonous repetition of an act which no longer meant
anything; not homicidal passion--not mad rage, but only the horrible
play of a distracted brain.
But by-and-by another sound roused him--the sound of a step crashing
among the branches once more. With a vague recollection in his madness
that some one else was coming, he rose, all bloody and horrible, and
looked about him. Some man or other stood within a few feet of him on
the other side of the little stream. Some one who called to him, who
hurried forward, jumping the brook. The madman knew nothing, who it was,
or what he wanted; but frenzy and fear are ever akin. He turned round
wildly, faced to the hills, and fled like an arrow from the bow.