A Tale
by John Saunders (uncredited).
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.2 #4 (Nov 1861).
Chapter I.
Stirring the Dust.
It's a long story, neighbours; and if you'd hear it out to-night you must get Langley to draw some more of that ale to prevent its getting dry. Thank you, Langley; set it on the hob. Now I'm comfortable, and I'll begin. Begin! Lord bless me, if it doesn't set one's flesh creeping to go hunting up the dead out of the churchyard yonder; for that's what it seems like, neighbours, when I try to bring to my mind all the people that were the pieces of my Puzzle—(I always called this tale my Puzzle). Yes, I see them rising up there, like ghosts, between me and the fire. There's broad-shouldered Stephen Trew, with his honest blue eyes. You couldn't look in Stephen's eyes and tell a lie. Ay, and there's Susanna in her bride's dress, all white and silver, holding up her bleeding hand; and there's good old Mr. Gledstyne, with his white hair and ruddy cheeks.
Then there's Gales—he was landlord here before your time, Langley. What's become of his big body, that seemed made on purpose to bend to the great folks? Ay, but old Gales had an oily tongue—a tongue that knew how to talk the last shilling out of a poor man's pocket better than any tongue going. But, steady! they're coming up from the dust faster than I want them. What have I to do with Gales? No, no; rest where you are, Gales! you've had your share out of us, and the worms are having theirs out of you now. Old Death makes everything even. Not yet, Susanna! I don't want you yet. All in good time. Now, neighbours, I've got all the pieces of my Puzzle ready, and I'm going to take them and put them together for you just as they came together in real life. Let's see: how far must I go back? But, neighbours, first I want you to try and call to mind a few of the things that happened before the Puzzle began.
You remember Mr. Gledstyne's French wife had an English maid—a Roman Catholic like herself—who, a week after her mistress's wedding, married David Trew. Well, it was about a year afterwards that I first went up as gardener at the Hall, and I do say it was a sin and a shame to see that Martha Trew always away from her home dangling after Mistress Gledstyne in the way she did. Bless you, they used to sit out in the garden with their babies, gossip-gossip, as if they'd been born sisters instead of mistress and maid. They were always talking about their children being so wonderfully alike, though for my part I never could see any difference in babies born within a fortnight of each other.
Then, you know, came the quarrels between Mr. Gledstyne and his wife as to what the boy was to be—Roman Catholic, as his mother insisted on having him; or Protestant, which Mr. Gledstyne declared he should be. Well, presently everything of that kind is forgotten for something more serious. A message comes to Mistress Gledstyne from her sister, who was the wife of some great body—a Consul or something, in the West Indies—begging her to go over to her directly, as she was dangerously ill. Yes, yes, Missus Langley; I'm quite aware, my good woman, you knew all this before. But wait a bit, maybe you'll find presently there was something going on in an under way like, which, begging your pardon ma'am, you were not quite up to, Well, Mistress Gledstyne sets off by vessel from London, and, after a deal of trouble with Mr. Gledstyne, takes the boy with her. Martha Trew goes with them as far as Plymouth, and takes her boy too. Well, well; you all remember the news coming a few days afterwards about the ship going down in the Channel, with only some half-dozen saved—four men, and a woman and her baby; and this woman was Martha Trew.
Well, as you know, there was a wonderful change in Martha after that. She never seemed to think of dress and pleasure now, but spent all her time and thought on her boy, and behaved much better to old Trew than ever she had before. It made him feel thankful and yet worried; for it went to his heart to hear her speak so weak and timid—she that used to have such a pert, out-and-out manner—and to see her getting more thin, and white, and scared-looking, every day. But the way she brought up that boy Stephen was a pattern to every mother in the village. Yet it always seemed to me, you know, that she wanted too much of the boy. A scholar he must be—and the best workman in the village. Sometimes she seemed quite to break down like, between the two; and, one day—mark neighbours, for here comes in the first bit of the Puzzle—one day, after she had been scolding him for not knowing his lessons, she said, looking into the fire in a dreamy kind of way,
"Poor boy! It's hard—it's very hard, to make him fit for both; and yet—"
There she caught my eye upon her, and coloured up, and turned white again, in a way that set me thinking over her words as I should never have done else. Yes, that was the first bit of the Puzzle that got into my head. Stephen was then twelve years old, and it was ten years more before I came upon the next bit. Hand me the pot, Langley, and you shall hear how that was! Thank you. Now for it!
Chapter II.
Susanna.
Well, I think we'll take a jump over that ten years; you just remembering what passed. Let's see what had passed by the time Stephen was twenty-two.
First of all, he had served his apprenticeship at Pringley's the carpenter's, and came out the first workman in the place. Martha wouldn't let him be apprenticed till Mr. Gledstyne advised her. I noticed that too. In the next place, old Trew had gone off in a fit, and poor Martha got more and more nervous and ailing every day, and at last couldn't move from her chair in the chimney corner. What the poor soul would have done without Susanna the niece, whom she had taken when her mother died, I don't know. Next thing, Master Stephen must go falling over head and ears in love with this Susanna. At first she only played fast and loose with him, as she did with all the chaps who were fools enough to have anything to do with her—eh, Langley?
She was reckoned a beauty though, in our day; but she was always too much like a fine white cat to please me. She'd a nice figure enough though, straight and lissome, and a neat-turned ancle; yes she had. I can see her now as she used to walk down the village past the works when she thought Pringley's men were looking after her. She stepped like a dancer, in her thin light boots. You never heard her coming,—she'd glide up to you like a cat. She used to wear a violet-coloured shawl to show off her fair complexion. That's the one fault I could never forget. She was too fair—much too fair. Her eyes were good—clear pale blue; but her eyelashes and brows were so light that it almost seemed as if she had none. Her low, straight forehead was so white, that you could see the little blue veins in her temple; and when she was upset those veins would swell till they were dark purple. There wasn't a bit of real colour in her face, except her lips, which were so thin that they only looked like a straight line of red between her nose and chin. She had light tawny-coloured hair turned off her face in Mistress Gledstyne's style, and little round curls like rings plastered on her cheeks. She wore a bonnet open at the ears to show off the long gold ear-rings which Mistress Gledstyne gave Martha, and a little black-spotted veil pinned close over her face. She used to lay her arms one over the other in front of her, so as to show the white hands with long-pointed fingers, such as ladies have; and she had a way always of looking round sideways out of the corners of her eyes, as if she fancied she was being watched or followed.
Well, as I said, at first Susanna treated Stephen in the same way she treated scores of others whose heads were turned by her tiger-lily hair and pale eyes: but by and by she turns over quite a fresh leaf; becomes kindness itself to Martha; is never seen walking out with any one bat Stephen; and seems bent heart and soul on pleasing him: making him think her a perfect angel.
And now as to this next piece of my Puzzle. One evening I had dropped in to see how poor Martha was. I was sitting in the chimney opposite to her, and Susanna was at the window watering the flowers. All of a sudden she set down the can, and called out—
"Aunt! aunt! There's a fire in Tanfield! Good gracious! it must be Stephen's workshop. Yes, that it is!"
Martha turned sharply round, and I stared as if I'd seen a ghost when I saw her rise straight up, and, holding on by the table, walk to the window. The fire flamed out bright and high—then sunk—and we saw through the smoke that the little workshop had not been touched; it was only the hayrick beside it had caught fire. Martha seemed to lose her new strength with her fright; she slid down on her knees and muttered to herself—
"My God! if it had been! O, if it had been! If I could never have righted him! O, I thought it was a judgment on me for my delay."
I went home. I turned my first bit of the Puzzle over and over, but couldn't fit it with this, though it seemed somehow to belong to it. Then I couldn't help mixing Susanna up with it all. Her sudden change to Stephen—her strange look at Martha when the rick was on fire—so ran in my head that I said, to myself, I shouldn't be surprised but what Susanna turns out a bit of the Puzzle. So from that time I kept my eye upon her pretty closely, I can tell you.
Chapter III.
Stephen's Picture in the Fire.
One day, when Stephen came in to his tea, the little room was filled with neighbours, and there was a smell of doctor's stuff—so that he wasn't much surprised when he saw the poor thin figure stretched on the settle; and he went and stood at her feet, and a strange pain shot through him as he looked at the pale face and staring eyes, that seemed to see something awful in the whitewashed wall. Susanna was leaning close over her. Stephen pushed her aside, and turned to the neighbours and said—
"Thanks for your help, neighbours! but I'm at home now, so it won't be needed any more; and what she's got to say now is for her own kith and kin to hear, and nobody else."
So one by one they dropped out.
Stephen took his mother's hand; it was so cold and damp that the touch made him shiver. She still kept staring at the wall in that dreadful vacant way, and presently she said, in a hollow voice—
"Ask her what it is she's wanting of me. Haven't I done all I can—now that it is so late? O, Steenie, Steenie! tell her to keep her heavy wet hands off me!"
Then she cowered low—her head on Stephen's arm, and lay still, looking at something beyond him.
Stephen looked over his shoulder, and was surprised to see Susanna standing there; he thought he was alone with his mother. After a little while he said to her—
*She's asleep; go up to bed, Susanna; I'll watch."
"Are you sure she's asleep, Stephen?" says Susanna; "I think I'll wait a bit longer;" and she sat down close by Martha.
Stephen went and stood by the fire; Martha's words had made him anxious for her. It was plain that what the neighbours whispered about her having something on her mind must be true, and he wished Susanna would go away and leave them alone.
Presently Martha started up on her elbow, and said, in the same strange, hollow voice,
"Don't curse me! O, Sir, haven't I brought him up almost as well as you could have done? But why should he ever know? Susanna! Susanna! don't go yet! Why should he ever know?"
Then she put both her hands to her head, and muttered,
"Ay! but that letter: that letter and that hair! I dare not burn them. Yet, why shouldn't 1? Who's to know, unless the sea can give up its dead?"
Stephen looked up and met Susanna's eye, that was fixed on him in a strange, uneasy way, and she said,
"Why cannot I watch, Stephen? It's not so bad for me to hear her raving like this as it is for you. Poor thing! it's all coming back to her about her young days, and the sweetheart that was drowned at sea."
"No, Susanna; I would rather you left us alone. You had best go to bed," Stephen said, in a determined sort of way. He didn't care about having his mother's troubles spoken of so before her—even by Susanna.
Susanna moved about, smoothing the pillows and drawing the window curtains, and doing half a dozen more little things that she seemed double the time over she need have been. At last, after Stephen had spoken to her again, she took her candle and went upstairs. Again did Stephen sit down by the fire, and he found himself listening heart and soul for his mother's next words. Martha was sitting up, rocking to and fro as if quieting a child. Presently she laid her hand on her forehead, and said, looking round at Stephen,
"Who was it said my boy was sick—dying? Look at him—see him on his feet! Does he look sick, David Trew—or dying, think you?"
Now, all this time Stephen sat looking into the fire. He saw a picture there. At first it was all dim and smoky, and the figures were huddled together; but by and by, as Martha still went on in her lightheaded, rambling way, his picture cleared, and cleared, till at last he got so intent upon it, that he rose up from his chair and stood staring at it, with his heart beating as if it would burst.
Once he went to the window, and looked at the fir plantations round the Hall, lying black on the side of the hill under the moon. Then he looked at his scarred, hard-worked hands, and then at the thin figure on the settle—and his heart was very bitter against her.
Soon Martha raised herself up a bit, and stared round the room, and said,
"Has he been told yet? Will he come? O Stephen, my boy, my boy! You won't curse me if he should come. I have been all that a mother could be to you, haven't I?"
He couldn't answer her—he couldn't speak; there was such a choking in his throat.
"Steenie," Martha said, in her own, natural voice, only very faint—"Steenie, come to me! I want to tell you a story."
Stephen went and stood by her, and a pain shot through him as he felt he was watching her dull eyes and white face—in such wild fear, not of losing his mother, but only of losing what she had to tell him. Yes, that's all he thought of at that minute, as he saw her trying to speak with her last breath; and that made him, when he found she couldn't, grip hold of her arm and say, in a voice low and hoarse, and shaking with passion,
"Mother! mother! Don't leave me like this! Before God, are you my mother?"
She did not breathe; yet still he gripped her arm and bent over her, and fixed his eyes on her face as if he would keep her against death—against anything, till she answered him. And the minutes went by without either moving a muscle. The white face grew drawn and fixed, and the tears that had come into the eyes when Stephen cried out so fiercely to know the truth, seemed to freeze there. At last he dropped the arm—and the clenched hand fell with a dead, heavy knock on the floor.
Martha Trew was dead!
Stephen knew it; and, in his madness at being shut out of the secret for ever, he could have shouted to the poor weary spirit that was turning to its rest, to come back and give him justice and amends. But by and by, as he kept looking at her with bitterness in his heart, his great loss came slowly and heavily over him, crushing every other feeling. He didn't move, but stood looking at the drawn mouth that had kissed him, and sang to him, and taught him, and the bony hand that had striven and worked for him—and two hot tears came rolling down his cheeks.
He forgot all about his picture now, and everything else in the world but his great loss. He was Martha's boy again, and she was his mother—his own mother; and she lay there dead! and a trouble was on her soul! He knelt down and kissed the grey hair on the pillow, and cried over it; and he buried his face in her breast, and stretched his arms over her, and clung about her as helpless as when he was a little child, looking up to her and saying, "Mother, take me!"
But Stephen was strong; and, though human nature will be human nature, he soon got the master-hand over his passion, and held it down like; and folding his hands together, and shutting his eyes to get into the darkness where she was, he tried to fancy himself by her side before the Judge, and he said—
"Master, take the burden from the weak workman, and lay it on the strong—take her debts from her, and make me debtor of them."
Poor Stephen, he little knew how fearfully all her wrong-doing would be visited on him in days to come.
When he got up from his knees the candle had burnt out, and the room, was pitch-dark; so he stretched himself on the floor by the settle, and drew a corner down of the old shawl she was wrapped in, and laid his forehead on it; and the two slept side by side—the living and the dead.
Ah, Martha Trew, Martha Trew! you didn't deserve to look back on the lad you had wronged so, and find him taking more comfort in a bit of the shawl your dead body's wrapped in than in the whole world. No, you didn't deserve it, if you did slave and toil, and give your soul for him.
So she was dead! Was the secret dead too? Dead, to go to dust with her heart—dead, never again to unsettle him it concerned? Ay, that's what I asked myself when I heard all this. Was it so? or had it passed from her to another? Did it still live in a living heart—and whose?
You shall hear.
Chapter IV.
Stephen Writes a Few Words in His Mother's Bible.
Stephen, you remember, gave up Martha's cottage to Susanna, and came to live with me at the Lodge belonging to the Hall. Now, we were the two worst ones in the world to live together and have secrets from one another; so it wasn't long before he told me all I've just told you. And we talked over the Puzzle together often,—and very quiet and keen Stephen was about it, never letting himself hope too much, and yet not shutting his eyes to anything, except when we happened to turn the light on Susanna,—that he always put a stop to instantly. Well; one Sunday night, when Stephen came in from one of his moonlight walks with Susanna, I thought he seemed a good deal excited, and asked him what was the matter? "Matter! Nothing—what should be the matter?" he said tartly, and then sat down by the window and leant his head on his arm. But Stephen would sooner cut off his fight hand—and he'd have cut off a good business with it, mind you—than he'd let a lie get an hour old, if one passed his lips; so in a minute or two he looks up and says—
"What do you think I've been doing this Sunday evening, Matthew? I've been taking an oath on my mother's Bible, and I've written the oath under her name."
He said it in a cool desperate kind of way, as much as to say—"It was wrong; but it's done now, and it's no good your bothering about it."
"Taking an oath, Stephen!" I said; "then it's to be hoped it's one you'll never repent, for you'd follow it if it led you to ruin."
"Yes, I'll keep it," said Stephen, quietly and firmly. Then he laughed and said, as he took up his candle,—
"It won't be so very difficult to keep though, and it won't lead to ruin exactly."
"You have sworn to marry Susanna! Isn't that it, Stephen?" I said.
He just nodded,—and I saw his hand shake as he lit his candle by mine.
"Stephen," I said, looking hard at him by the light of both, "you didn't do that coolly, and of your own free will."
"I should hope I did though," said he, with a forced kind of laugh.
"Then I'm very sorry it's happened, Stephen Trew," I said; and I said it from my heart.
He didn't fly out at me as I expected, and as he always did when I said anything against Susanna, but stood still, kicking at a hole in my carpet with his heel.
"How was it?" I asked him at last, for he seemed to want to speak.
"Oh, she vexed me with keeping on so about my casting her off if I happened to get a bit higher in the world."
"Indeed," thinks I, "cunning as usual Miss Susanna." "Well, Stephen?"
"At last," said Stephen, "after I had sworn over and over again that nothing 'ud ever make me change, she held up the Bible and said, half laughing, 'I dare you to write your oath in this, Stephen!' At first I didn't like to; but she in a way taunted me into it,—so I took out my measuring-pencil, and it was done before I gave it a second thought."
"What did you write, Stephen?" I asked him.
"I wrote what she told me," said he—"I, Stephen Trew, swear by this book, that, come what may, I do consider Susanna Ford my affianced wife."
"And she told you to write just that?"
Again he nodded.
"Stephen!" I said, dashing my pipe to pieces under the grate, "that woman's an artful, scheming witch! Take my word for it there's something at the bottom of her fine doubts and misgivings. There's some secret in her hands, which, if I were you, I'd shake out of her somehow or other. Why, you can't be blind to it, man? It's as clear as daylight."
Stephen turned full on me, and brought his hand down heavily on my shoulder.
"Matthew Prynne," says he, a little hoarsely, "if you speak another word against her, I shall be forgetting you're an old man, and—But I'll say no more about it now, only this—remember, whatever happens, I look on her as my wife, and whoever insults her insults me. You know what I've done—you know I can't draw back. Let's hear no more about it. Here's my hand, Matthew; you're my best friend, and I shouldn't like this to part us,—only, don't say a word more against her."
We shook hands, but from that time I worked at the Puzzle alone.
Chapter V.
Susanna's Wedding Feast.
Well; the wedding-day came round. It was New Year's eve—and a black New Year's eve it was too. When I opened the Lodge door before it was quite light in the morning, the first thing I saw was a single crow flying over from the trees behind Susanna's cottage to the Hall. It stopped in front for an instant, and clapped its great black wings; then perched on the gable just over Mr. Gledstyne's bedroom window. I shook my head as I saw it, and watched Stephen go off in his fine clothes. He made me promise I'd hobble down to the village to see the dancing, if my rheumatism would let me.
Well: about seven in the evening I went. They'd got the old room where Martha died done up in grand style. Tommy Grimes stood up on the settle fiddling away for his life; and the girls were all dressed out in their best, and chattering—lor! you could scarcely hear a squeak of Tommy's fiddle.
Presently came Susanna gliding down the room to speak tome. I looked at her from head to foot. I looked at her well; and if ever a woman looked like an angel from the wrong place Stephen's bride did, as she tried to stare me out with those pale blue eyes of hers. Now, you could see that Susanna had determined not to dress like a common village girl; but for once in her life she had overstepped her mark, for she was dressed more like a Stage princess than a lady. She had made herself a dress out of a grand thing that Martha once showed me, and told me had been a Court-dress of Mistress Gledstyne's. It had broad silver stripes down it; and as Susanna went sliding and gliding, and twisting and turning, in the dance, she looked more than ever like a splendid white woman-snake—all glitter, and shine, and softness. Her shoulders quite dazzled one as her veil flew back; and as the others got hot and red, she seemed to grow colder and whiter, and more light of foot, every minute.
As for Stephen, he was always fond of dancing; but to-night he was as if he couldn't stop still an instant. At last, after he had danced with every girl in the room, and frightened two or three old bodies out of their wits by catching 'em up and whirling 'em round till they didn't know whether they stood on their heads or their feet, he came and sat down by me, near the door. I could see that his eyes, like mine, followed the silver stripes and fluttering veil in and out among the gaudy dresses. Perhaps he noticed, as well as me, that there was something odd and unusual in Susanna's manner that night. Though she danced with anybody that asked her, she somehow didn't seem like one of the rest, but held her head up, and gave her hand gingerly, like a grand lady who had just stepped down from her drawing-room to please the poor people by mixing a few minutes in the dance.
Well, they were all tearing about like mad, and dancing too hard for any chattering to go on the while, and Tommy's fiddle sounded bravely, when the door opened, and Mr. Gledstyne's man John put his head in.
"Why, that's a long face to come to a wedding-feast with, John," says I. "What's the matter?"
"Matthew," says he, "you're wanted directly; Master's fell from his horse and broke his leg! The Doctor doesn't think he'll get over it. He said he should like to see all his servants, and had us up. You're the only one that was away, and he's sent me to fetch you."
I told him Id be after him directly; and as I turned to ask Stephen to get my stick from the chimney corner, I found the silver stripes quite close to me; and looking up, I could see Susanna had heard something that had interested her.
When Stephen came with my stick, he whispered, "Say good night to Susanna, and wish her well."
I turned round to where she had stood half a minute ago, between me and the open door, and she was gone. Pass me she certainly never had; no, she had gone out, bitterly cold as it was, in her thin wedding-clothes.
But Stephen laughed, and looked all round the room before he would believe it. When he couldn't doubt it any more, he came to me and said, with a troubled, suspicious face,
"Matthew, tell me—did she hear about Mr. Gledstyne?"
I told him I thought by the look of her face she had heard.
"Then where do you think she is gone?" he asked in a whisper.
I thought of the second bit of my Puzzle, and said,
"The workshop! Take my advice, Stephen, get there by the nearest cut, and watch round it." And I went my way up to the Hall, leaving him to do as he chose. Well, as I want to tell you just how things worked round, I must tell you about him first.
He went. It was a strange night—one minute pitch-dark, and another clear moonlight. With a sick feeling at his heart, he took the key from where it hung just inside the little window, jerked it round in the rusty lock, and shutting the door, hung the key back in its place. Then he stood, not knowing what to do—leaning his back against the door, and asking himself if he wasn't a fool for taking such strange advice.
By and by, as he stood there with his eyes fixed upon the ground, it struck him all at once that there were two kinds of light flickering over it. Yes, Missus Langley, you may as well send the little ones to bed, for it's a queer bit I'm coming to now. Well, suddenly lifting his eyes to see where the other light came from, Stephen saw something that made him clutch the bench with his fingers, and turned his face to the colour of death.
There, at the little window with the one broken pane, moving slowly up and down on the right-hand side—as if feeling for the key—was a hand—a woman's hand—thin and long, and of a bluish white, with a light red shining through at the nails. The wrist didn't move, because of the thin sharp points of glass that stuck up all round, but kept still, while the fingers felt about. Presently, the arm was pushed in nearly to the elbow, and the light outside was raised a little.
A horrible feeling came over Stephen as he was obliged to own that he knew that white hand—that he had touched it—that those horrid, creeping, feeling fingers had been tangled in his hair; that that ring shining round one of them had been placed there by him, with vows that put his whole fate into that hateful hand. And mark! not only did Stephen know it as his bride's hand, but, as he watched it with loathing and fascinated eyes, he knew it to be the hand that for years had been tangling a kind of web about him so quietly and secretly, that he never knew it till he felt himself bound hand and foot. As he looked, and looked, he let out the breath that was stifling him in a quick sort of gasp. He was heard! The hand moved up with a sudden jerk, and caught in the longest point of jagged glass at the top. It did seem alive then. There was a little half-smothered scream that seemed to come from it; and each nail seemed like a red eye glaring at Stephen. He laid hold of the bench and drew himself up stiffly; but when he saw the blood dripping from the pointed tips of the fingers, his head reeled, and to save himself from falling he sank down close behind the door, so that if it opened he would be completely hidden—by it on one side, and the planks on the other. He kept his eyes on the window still; and, as he had felt sure it would after listening and hearing no sound, the hand returned, and this time succeeded in reaching the key. Then he heard a soft scrunching noise coming round the shed, like light feet on the snow—and got further behind the planks, that stood longways against the wall and a little apart, so that he could see through the cracks. Well, the key turns, and the door opens, and she comes in with a lantern in her hand. With a dreadful beating at his heart he saw the tall figure, shining in its satin and silver stripes, glide up to a corner and begin moving something from the wall. While she clutched and clutched at the brick, she once turned her head in the old cautious way over her shoulder, and, without her knowing it, their eyes met. Stephen shut his with a shudder—then opened them, and fixed them upon her again.
After a few minutes more patient cat-like working she turned and glided out, with a smile on her face and something wrapped in a corner of her veil.
Stephen staggered out after her, and saw her turn in the direction of the Hall.
Chapter VI.
Stephen's Inheritance.
Well, when I got up to the Hall, after leaving Stephen, I found Mr. Gledstyne a good deal better. He was stretched on the sofa in the Study. The Doctor had just left him, and I found him alone. I could see he was half distracted with pain, yet he tried so hard to speak in his old jolly way that it brought the tears in my eyes to hear him.
"Shan't be able to lead the dance to-night, Matthew," says he. "I'm sorry, for I haven't missed dancing at one of the last five weddings we've had—and—"
I didn't catch what else he said, for I was listening to a voice at the door—a voice I thought I knew by the way it hissed out every word, as if it were all esses.
"I tell you I must see Mr. Gledstyne!" says the voice.
"It's no good asking him," said Mr. Gledstyne's man John; "he's too bad to see anybody."
"I must see him! If he's dying I must see him!" says the voice, loud and distinct.
"What is it? What's the matter, John?" asks Mr. Gledstyne fretfully.
Then says the voice, in a long, low hiss—
"Tell him Mistress Gledstyne wants to speak to him!"
Mr. Gledstyne gave a sort of cry, and started up, and, with his head stuck forward, stared towards the door. I, too, leant forward in my chair, and strained my eyes through the fire-light. I heard no step coming, but I heard a soft rustling—and I knocked the end of the log into the hollow part of the fire, and so threw a bright red light upon the figure standing in the middle of the room. I hardly noticed at the time that her left-hand was bleeding, through the veil it was wrapped in, all over her fine dress—for my whole mind was taken up with the Puzzle, and with watching what she was going to do next—how she meant to prove her right to that name—which was all a mystery to me. She was now standing by Mr. Gledstyne's sofa, answering with a cool, impudent look, his frightened gaze.
"What do you mean? What are you doing with my name?" he gasped out, livid with anger—for it had been a terrible shock to him; he had half expected to see his drowned wife, and he felt enraged beyond everything against this woman, who he thought had played a trick upon him for amusement.
Susanna kept her eyes on his in the same impudent way, as she said, with a half smile, but a shaky voice—
"It is my name, too, Sir; and I have every right to it."
"What do you mean, woman? Speak!" he shouted, trembling in every limb.
"I mean, Mr. Gledstyne," said Susanna slowly, folding her arms and looking down upon him, still smiling, "that I am your son's wife."
"My son's!" he muttered. "Mad woman!"
"Yes, Mr. Gledstyne," says she, holding out a yellow-looking letter to him; "Stephen Trew is your own son, as this will show you."
Here it is, neighbours. I don't know whether I had any right to keep it. Yes, here's the very letter Mr. Gledstyne held in his shaking hand and read, while Susanna's eyes darted about, first on one grand piece of furniture, then on another, and then on his face, still with that strange smile of hers curling her thin lips. Yes, this is it! Listen, neighbours! I'll try and read it, though the ink's nearly faded away.
"On board The Reachland,
"Wednesday evening.
"I am settled in the ship, Vernon, and Martha leaves me to-morrow. Yes, to-morrow I shall be alone. I am very miserable. I don't know why—for after all it is not much to cross this sea. I did not think it so when I crossed it with you—to go to your home and all that I am now leaving—and I cannot tell why I shudder at it now. Yet a fear has been over me ever since my foot left the land that it would never touch it more. But I did not sit down to write to you of this, but our child. It shall be as you wish—Martha shall take him back to you to-morrow. Poor girl—now that she has lost hers, she clings more than ever to little Vernon. Say a kind word to her, will you not, and let her see him often?
"There then, I have promised; but how shall I—O, how shall I part with him—my darling? He is lying on my neck now, with one little hand twisted in my hair, and the other stroking my wet cheek. Perhaps he wonders why it is wet as he looks up at me with those eyes of yours. He little thinks it is because when I have folded this I shall lay him in Martha's arms—perhaps never to take him back. Who can tell? How tightly he has twisted his hand about my hair. When Martha takes him, I will cut the piece off as he holds it, and he shall bring it to you in his hand; it will show you a little, perhaps, how he is twined about my heart, and how much of that—the best—will be dragged and torn away from this ship to the shore, as I see him there in Martha's arms, and the miles growing and growing between us.
"I have taken the cross from his neck—you know what that means—and have bought him one of your Bibles—a very pretty one you see, with bright clasps, that he may take to it early. Try, Vernon, to realize what it is I give up to you, and think of me once more as you used.
"Martha has come, and my trial; and I have not said one-half that I wished to say. You will not forget to be kind to Martha.
"Farewell! Would that I had never begun this journey!
Amy Gledstyne."
As Mr. Gledstyne finished reading this letter, Susanna undid the rusty clasps of a Bible she took from her pocket, and opening it, showed a knot of hair. It was dark and tangled; you could fancy that the little stubborn baby's fist had only just let go of it. Mr. Gledstyne took the Bible and looked down upon the hair till a mist gathered over his eyes.
"Matthew," he said, with a trembling voice, "send for him; send for Stephen Trew."
So I went out and spoke to John, for I felt afraid somehow of leaving my poor master alone with that snake, Susanna, or I should have gone for Stephen myself, and prepared him for all. When I came back Mr. Gledstyne was reading another worn letter; it was from that poor soul, Martha. I'll tell it you, as well as I can recollect:—
"By the time Stephen will have come to you with this and my mistress's letter, and it is made known to you what I have done, I shall have met her, my mistress, face to face, and she will have asked me about her last message. You will not know before then; because, after all, I have given your boy my life, my whole care; and how could I die any other to him than I have lived—his mother? I do not ask you to forgive me, Mr. Gledstyne; I cannot expect forgiveness; but I ask you to believe it was love for the boy made me do what I did, and that—that same love, brought me my punishment. I have never known a day's peace since I took him home in my arms—clinging to me as if his life hung upon mine—and it wasn't nature to part us. Yes, my love was indeed my punishment. It grew and grew in me every day; but if at any time I would forget and give way to it, and try to fancy it my own, I seemed to see her standing between me and the child, looking through her wet hair, as she looked when her body rose in the waves that night, and to hear her saying—"He is mine, Martha Trew; he is mine!" and I've had to call up a hard word to my mouth, and to see the boy turning away from me afraid, with the tears in his eyes, when all the time I'd be longing to snatch him up in my arms, You'll remember that. Please—please remember that, Mr. Gledstyne, and don't be too hard on me, nor let him, my Steenie, be too hard on—it's a bitter word to write, but never mind—he'll never see her after he reads it—his nurse,
Martha Trew."
"Well," said Mr. Gledstyne, when he had read it, "and who did Martha trust this to—you?"
"Me!" said Susanna, boldly; "why I never dreamed of Stephen being anything but a poor working man till this very night, when I found these things in a chest of Aunt Martha's I never opened before. She might have meant to—I think she did—but she was light-headed some weeks before she died, and didn't know what she said. No, Sir,"—(she went on drawing up her long figure till her shadow on the wall touched the ceiling)—"I should never have married Stephen if I had known."
While Susanna said this, I noticed that her lips grew white and her fingers twitched, as if she longed to snatch Martha's letter from Mr. Gledstyne's hands.
Just then the hounds set up a barking, and the Lodge-bell rang. Mr. Gledstyne looked at his son's wife, and pointing to the great doors of the drawing-room, said in a cold, polite, but hurried sort of way:
"Will you please to walk in there while I speak to Stephen? I hear he has come."
With another uneasy look at the letter, which Mr. Gledstyne noticed, she smiled and bent her head, and went into the great dark drawing-room, and closed the door after, her, as Stephen was shown in at the other door. He stood there a minute with his cap in his hand, till Mr. Gledstyne said—
"Come here, Stephen!"
So he went and stood by him, and Mr. Gledstyne gave him his wife's letter, and watched him while he read it, with tears rolling down his cheeks into his white beard. It was the first time I had ever seen him so, and I made a fool of myself so that I couldn't see any more, till Stephen had placed the letter on the pillow and taken up the hair and laid it tenderly on the back of his hand, as if it were too silky and delicate to touch with his rough fingers. Then he laid that back on the letter—ay, the hand had brought the hair at last; but it had grown and roughened a bit on the journey.
Mr. Gledstyne took both of Stephen's hands in his, and looked up in his face, waiting to see the change come over it. But it never altered, Stephen seemed to shrink more and more into himself as he stood there,—the workman still (for he couldn't throw off the old life all in a minute), looking at his coarse hands lying in Mr. Gledstyne's, and he felt ashamed.
Mr. Gledstyne looked anxious. No doubt it came across him: Was his son so much a carpenter that his heart had hardened to what he worked in, that he stood there like a block, so dull and stupid? He could not bear that—No! better to have never known he was his son. He let go his hands, and opened his arms wide, and said—
"My boy! my boy!"
There was a great cry from Stephen—hoarse and strong—and a heavy fall that shook the floor; and I stopped my ears. I don't know if it was right to have heard all I did; but I wouldn't hear any more, I saw Stephen's head strained to his father's breast, with his cheek on his mother's hair and letter—and that was enough. I stopped my ears to shut out the two men's sobs.
"Are you there, Matthew?" Mr. Gledstyne said at last—his deep voice as faint and sweet as a woman's: "are you there? Come, stir up the fire, man, and let's have a look at him!"
And I did; but it was too bad for even he to look Stephen in the face just then.
"Yes," says he, as he put his hands on his broad shoulders, and held him off. "Yes, it's Amy's boy, sure enough. Ay, they've robbed us of each other all these years, but they couldn't do us much harm. I'm not a whit the less proud of you, my boy—no, not a whit, for your having been Stephen Trew!"
Mr, Gledstyne fell back, white as death.
"See if there's any brandy in there," said I to Stephen; "I'll go down and see if the Doctor's gone."
Susanna stood there as he opened the drawing-room door, but he rushed past taking no notice of her, and she came in and stood looking at Mr. Gledstyne in such a strange way, that, hardly knowing what I was about, I touched Stephen's arm, and pointed to a great looking-glass in the drawing-room opposite the open door, and in which we could see the corner of the study where Mr. Gledstyne lay. He was looking at the end of the last page of Martha's letter, and Susanna's fingers twiched and her eyes glared upon him, and she quietly went nearer and nearer to him, as he held up the leaf so as to see through it by the fire-light. Suddenly looking up, he found her close beside him.
"Liar!" he hissed out through his clenched teeth and ashy lips, "I have found you out. This line of writing that has been scratched and meddled with is—‘Susanna knows all! May she with God's blessing right those that I have wronged.' Stephen! Stephen I say!"
I think Stephen would have fallen if it hadn't been for my poor rheumatic arm. Still we could not move; our eyes seemed riveted on the glass by the strange, almost devilish smile, on Susanna's face, as she stood looking down upon him.
"Have you found me out?" she said, in that low whisper of hers that almost froze my blood to hear; "and will you tell Stephen? Will you? Will you? Dare you?"
"Stephen! Help!"
As we hurried in together Susanna passed us, gliding along with her cat-like step, and sat down in the old State chair by the fire in the drawing-room.
Mr. Gledstyne lay back upon the pillow—dead.
"Were we dreaming?" whispered Stephen, passing his hand over his clammy brow, "or did—did that horrible hand touch him? Look here, Matthew, look!"
He drew something from his father's clenched hand. Holding it up and spreading it out, we saw it was a corner of flimsy lace—a piece of Susanna's veil. Now mind! I tell you, neighbours, as I told Stephen at the time, I don't believe she meant to do more than stop him telling Stephen about those scratched-out lines, but stopping his breath for an instant in the state he was in was enough to stop it for ever. Stephen stood looking at it for full three minutes before he could take in the horrible truth. Then he strode to the drawing-room door, and stood looking round the room with his wild eyes and lips as white and as firm-set as a dead man's.
Susanna did not see him—she was standing with her back to us, looking up at the splendid pictures and mirrors which covered that side of the wall. Presently she spread her arms out, and said to herself, looking up and down the wall.
"Mine! mine! every thing—all mine!"
My heart misgave me as to what Stephen was going to do—he looked at her so fixedly and long. I knew how much greater his hate must be for having loved her so, and now I trembled for her—tigress as she was. At last he went into the room, and, without taking any notice of Susanna, took hold of the bell-rope and pulled it violently without stopping till all the servants, who had heard something from John of what was going on, came hurrying to the door.
Susanna stared, half stupefied, wondering what he was going to do.
As Stephen stepped forward towards them, I saw two or three started as I did, to see how like he was just now—with his stern, pale face—to the portraits of the two last Squires hanging on the wall.
"You have heard what has passed to-night—you know who I am, John?" he said; drawing himself up, as if he were proud of his inheritance, poor fellow!
"Yes, God bless you, Sir," said the old butler, with tears in his eyes. "I know you're the master of this house—and we've all known you, Sir, just as if you'd been brought up in it—and we wouldn't wish for a better master, seeing the Squire's took away from us."
And the women all curtsied to Stephen, but sent looks of dislike at Susanna, who stood drawn up in her fine dress, trying to look very grand and high, but trembling all the while to hear what he was going to say to them. A pink spot came on each cheek, and the little blue veins in her temples swelled as if they'd burst, when Stephen stretched out his arm and pointed at her, and said:
"Very well, then. That is my wife, the mistress of this house; and I command you to obey her every word—to wait upon her hand and foot. You know this is our wedding-night. Light the candles in the State bedroom—take her there and wait upon her. If I do not come in less than an hour, fetch me; I shall be in the Study with my father—mind, I say—fetch me."
Chapter VII.
The Lady of Gledstyne Hall.
Mistress Susanna Gledstyne stood looking at her fine figure, at full length, in a dressing-glass in the old State bedroom.
After making the women try on her all the faded finery in the wardrobes, she had chosen to be dressed in a loose white gown of Indian muslin, and now she was arranging a large flower, made of jewels, in her tawny hair.
She stood looking at herself with a great flaming wax-light on each side the glass, waiting for the bridegroom to come—for the hour was passed.
Perhaps she was thinking of the family diamonds that Mr. Gledstyne's sister, Miss Mirabel, went to Court in, and wondering how soon they would be put into her hands. At any rate, she was tired of walking through the old house, and ringing the bells to see how often the servants would answer to her call. She was tired of scribbling "Susanna Gledstyne" on the blank leaves of books on the drawing-room table—almost tired of looking at her own white face.
Suddenly, she hears footsteps coming up the stairs and along the passage. The outer door of the bedroom creaks, and two women come and draw aside the heavy curtains, and hold them back—and Mistress Gledstyne turns to meet the bridegroom. But first come two men bearing lights—who wait at the door and look back; then, more heavy, shuffling feet, and another two come in—carrying a man's body by the feet and arms. The blood is pouring from his side, and, just as he is, they lift him on the bed—the bridal bed.
We had gone to the Study at the end of the hour. I had opened the door as quietly as I could, and saw Stephen kneeling by his father's side. He was looking at something he held in his hand. At first I didn't notice what it was (one of the old pistols that were always kept loaded on the sideboard); but I was struck all of a heap like, by the sight of his face! Poor Stephen! Even at a time like that he bore the truth on his face; for if I hadn't seen the pistol, I could have told what he was meaning to do. At one instant, through the determined look, the face was sad and tender, as if he were giving a last thought to his father and his own mother, and her to whom he was related by a tie as strong as that of blood—poor Martha Trew. Then there seemed to come over him, like a flash, a thought of the greatness and happiness that might have been his; and his face grew so strange and fierce that I thought the time had come to save him from himself, and two of us rushed in. But as soon as he saw us he leapt to his feet, turned the pistol against his heart, and fired! I had knocked the pistol upwards a few inches as he fired, and the ball entered his shoulder. He gave a low moan, and fell fainting against the sofa; and, just as he was, we lifted him up and carried him in to Susanna.
By this time all sorts of wild stories had spread over the village. Crowds had got round the house, and some of those who had been drinking hard at the wedding-feast, and had only got some muddled idea of Stephen's good luck, were shouting under the window and throwing up their caps—while poor women who had heard that Mr. Gledstyne was dead, cried and wrung their hands, and declared ruin must come upon them. The magistrate and the clergyman, and two or three more of Mr. Gledstyne's friends, came into the room where we were, and questioned us.
Mistress Gledstyne took no notice of anything but Stephen. She stood at the bedside, holding the curtain back with one hand, and her beautiful hair with the other; while the smile which she wore when she turned to meet the bridegroom seemed frozen on her face. For nearly five minutes she stood so. Then she put her foot on the steps, and set one knee on the bed, still smiling so awfully as she looked down upon him. Her eyes were like two cold, polished stones, and in the hollow of each a great tear lay glittering.
At last, as Stephen began to revive, you could see sense coming slowly into her face, and her white lips moved with a piteous, weak kind of cry:
"Stephen! Stephen! What have you done?"
Stephen started up with a shrill scream—almost like a woman's scream it was—and drops of sweat came out thick on his forehead.
"O God!" he said, looking round, "she is here again! I thought I'd got away from her for ever. Help me! Help me! Look! she is going to kill me as she killed him!"
She was only stretching her clasped hands in a beseeching way towards him, but when she heard his last words, and saw him sink fainting on the pillow, she shrank back and slid from the bed. Stephen's words seemed to decide the magistrate, who had been hearing the servants' strange stories about her, and he signed to two of them to lock her in one of the rooms till he could learn more. There was something terrible in Susanna's cowardly fright. She glided between the two men like an eel, and stood panting and glaring round her at the foot of the bed. All her cunning—all her bravado, had come to an end; and now her brain seemed turning as she looked round and saw the finish of her work. She standing there, robed and jewelled—the lady of Gledstyne Hall; her husband dying by his own hand, which he had lifted against himself to be freed from her; the grand gentlemen, from whom she had thought to command respect and admiration, looking down upon her with disgust and horror; the poor people—her own people, she had thought to rise above and crush under her dainty heel—coming forward to lay hands on her in her own house. Ay, and I could see her wild disordered brain showed her more than these—for, as she fixed her eyes on the bare wall, such a look of horror came over her face that it might have been Martha on her death-bed that she saw and heard crying to her, in her weak, piping voice, "Susanna! Susanna! right those that I have wronged!" It was as if she fancied the dead as well as the living whom she had injured were coming about her to lay rough hands on her, for her pale blue eyes rolled distractedly, and she kept stretching out her hands with the palms outwards, as if she were defending herself against thousands. The touch of one of the men's hands on her shoulder seemed to madden her completely. She wrenched herself from him like a tigress, with a half-smothered shriek gave one look round, and then turned and rushed through the women and servants—who drew back shuddering—and out at the doorway into the wide corridor. The doors at the end leading on to the terrace stood open, and the moonlight poured in, so that we could see her distinctly as she flew along, tearing as she went the wedding-ring from her finger, the bracelets from her arms, the jewel-flower from her long yellow hair—ay, and even shreds of her dress. Once—(and O, how that set my flesh creeping, for it made everything so awfully real!)—once she turned, and gave the old look over her shoulder; and then, though not a soul had stirred to follow her, she shrieked and flew on, and on, her white-slippered feet hardly touching the polished floor. Another instant, and the lithe tall figure stood swaying on the terrace wall, sixty feet above the courtyard. The shrieks of fright suddenly changed to wild, piercing yells of laughter, the long white arms were tossed into the air—and then all was still as death; and there was nothing to be seen but the white line of terrace-wall, and the jewels lying here and there on the dark floor, sparkling in the moonlight. A few minutes after, the church clock struck twelve, and the bells broke out—the black year was over!
* * * * *
You may be sure the young Squire (God bless him!) didn't want for kind hearts about him, and careful doctoring; but for all that, he lay for three days between life and death. On the fourth day he woke from a heavy sleep, and, for the first time since he had seen her leaning over him, he seemed perfectly sensible. It had been an anxious morning, for the Doctor had told us some change, for better or worse, must come in a few hours, and crowds of people hung about the place waiting to hear. The gentry who had taken the upper hand at the Hall could not keep the poor women from pushing in and listening at the bedroom door; some even got into the room, and sat hushing their babies behind the curtains. I was the first person he asked for when he opened his eyes; and when I bent down to him, he said—
"Matthew, where is she? I'm glad you've got her away; but she must be looked after. She mustn't starve, nor come to any harm."
"Stephen," I said (and it seemed a comfort to him to hear the old name), "Susanna won't harm herself or any one again. She's dead!"
He stared at me as if he couldn't understand me, at first; then a kind of light came over his face—and he burst into tears, and threw himself into my arms, and said, after a while—
"I shan't die, Matthew. I'll live, and try and forget all that's past, and do my duty by these poor people, as my father did."
He spoke very low, but he was heard all over the room; and there went up such a cheer for the young Squire that it was heard and caught up by the crowd outside, and all Pennsbury knew he was out of danger.
There, that's all neighbours! You all know whether the Squire's kept his word. Ay, you may well call him the poor man's friend. But come, it's getting late. The Hall's lighted up in grand style. Hark! Why, isn't that the carriage I hear? Come neighbours! now that you have heard the Squire's story, let's see what sort of a welcome you can give him and his lady. Ay, here they come! Out with the horses lads! Hurrah!