Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 3 of 3

Wena, as sure as dogs are dogs; mounted on the mossy arm, lick–lick–licking, mewing like a cat almost, even offering taste of her tongue, while every bit of the Wena dog shook with ecstatic rapture.

“Oh, Wena, Wena! what are you come to tell me, Wena? Oh that you could speak!”

Wena immediately proved that she could. She galloped round Amy, barking and yelling, until the great wood echoed again; the rabbits, a mile away, pricked their ears, and the yaffingales stopped from tapping. Then off set the little dog down the footpath. Oh, could it be to fetch somebody?

The mere idea of such a thing made Amy shake so, and feel so odd, she was forced to put one hand against the tree, and the other upon her heart. She could not look, she was in such a state; she could not look down the footpath. It seemed, at least, a century, and it may have been half a minute, before she heard through the bushes a voice – tush, she means the voice.

“Wena, you bad dog, come in to heel. Is this all you have learned by travelling?”

But Wena broke fence and everything, set off full gallop again to Amy, tugged at her dress, and retrieved her.

What happened after that Amy knows not, neither knows Cradock Nowell. So anything I could tell would be a fond thing vainly invented. All they remember is – looking back upon it, as both of them may, to the zenith of their lives – that neither of them could say a word except “darling, darling, darling!” all pronounced as superlatives, with “my own,” once or twice between, and an exclusive sense of ownership, illiberal and unphilosophical. What business have we with such minor details? Who has sworn us accountants of kisses? All we have any right to say is, that after a long spell of inarticulate tautology, Amy looked up when Cradock proposed to add another cipher; very gravely, indeed, she looked up; except in the deepest depth of her eyes.

“Oh no, Cradock. You must not think of it. Seriously now, you must not, love.”

“Why? I should like to know, indeed! After all the time I have been away!”

“I have so little presence of mind. I forgot to tell you in time, dear. Why, because Wena has licked my face all over, darling. Darling, yes, she has, I say. You are too bad not to care about it. Now come to my own best father, dear. Offer your arm like a gentleman.”

So they – as Milton concisely says. Homer would have written “they two.” How sadly our language wants a dual! We, the domestic race, have we rejected it because the use would have seemed a truism?

*****

That same afternoon Bull Garnet lay dying, calmly and peacefully going off, taking his accounts to a larger world. He knew that there were some heavy items underscored against him; but he also knew that the mercy of God can even outdo the hope He gives us for token and for keepsake. A greater and a grander end, after a life of mark and power, might, to his early aspirations and self–conscious strength, have seemed the bourne intended. If it had befallen him – as but for himself it would have done – to appear where men are moved by passion, vigour, and bold decision, his name would have been historical, and better known to the devil. As it was, he lay there dying, and was well content. The turbulence of life was past, the torrent and the eddy, the attempt at fore–reaching upon his age, and sense of impossibility, the strain of his mental muscles to stir the great dead trunks of “orthodoxy,” and then the self–doubt, the chill, the depression, which follow such attempts, as surely as ague tracks the pioneer.

Thank God, all this was over now, and the violence gone, and the dark despair. Of all the good and evil things which so had branded him distinct, two yet dwelled in his feeble heart, only two still showed their presence in his dying eyes. Each of those two was good, if two indeed they were – faith in the heavenly Father, and love of the earthly children.

Pearl was sitting on a white chair at the side of the bed away from the window, with one hand in his failing palm, and the other trying now and then to enable her eyes to see things. She was thinking, poor little thing, of what she should do without him, and how he had been a good father to her, though she never could understand him. That was her own fault, no doubt. She had always fancied that he loved her as a bit of his property, as a thing to be managed; now she knew that it was not so; and he was going away for ever, and who would love or manage her? And the fault of all this was her own.

Rufus Hutton had been there lately, trying still to keep up some little show of comfort, and a large one of encouragement; for he was not the man to say die till a patient came to the preterite. Throughout the whole, and knowing all, he had behaved in the noblest manner, partly from his own quick kindness, partly from that protective and fiduciary feeling which springs self–sown in the hearts of women when showers of sorrow descend, and crops up in the manly bosom at the fee of golden sunshine. Not that he took any fees; but that his professional habits revived, with a generosity added, because he knew that he would take nothing, though all were in his power.

Suddenly Mr. Pell came in, our old friend Octavius, sent for in an urgent manner, and looking as a man looks who feels but cannot open on the hinge of his existence. Like a thorough gentleman, he had been shy of the cottage, although aware of their distress; eager at once and reluctant, partly because it stood not in his but his rectorʼs parish, partly for deeper reasons.

Though Pell came in so quietly, Bull Garnet rose at his entry, or tried to rise on the pillow, swept his daughter back by a little motion of his thumb, which she quite understood, and cast his eyes on the parsonʼs with a languid yet strong intelligence. He had made up his mind that the man was good, and yet he could not help probing him.

The last characteristic act of poor Bull Garnetʼs life, a life which had been all character, all difference, from other people.

“Will you take my daughterʼs hand, Pell?”

“Only too gladly,” answered Pell; but she shrank away, and sobbed at him.

“Pearl, come forward this moment. It is no time for shilly–shallying.”

The poor thing timidly gave her hand, standing a long way back from Pell, and with her large eyes streaming, yet fixed upon her father, and no chance at all of wiping them.

“Now, Pell, do you love my daughter? I am dying, and I ask you.”

“That I do, with all my heart,” said Pell, like a downright Englishman. “I shall never love any other.”

“Now, Pearl, do you love Mr. Pell?” Her fatherʼs eyes were upon her in a way that commanded truth. She remembered how she had told a lie, at the age of seven or eight, and that gaze had forced it out of her, and she had never dared to tell one since, until no lie dared come near her.

“Father, I like him very much. Very soon I should love him, if – if he loved me.”

“Now, Pell, you hear that!”

“Beyond all doubt I do,” said Octave, whose dryness never deserted him in the heaviest rain of tears; “and it is the very best thing for me I have heard in all my life.”

Bull Garnet looked from one to the other, with the rally of his life come hot, and a depth of joyful sadness. Yet must he go a little further, because he had always been a tyrant till people understood him.

“Do you want to know how much money, sir, I intend to leave her, when I die to–night or to–morrow morning?”

Cut–and–dry Pell was taken aback. A thoroughly upright and noble fellow, but of wholly different and less rugged road of thought. Meanwhile Pearl had slipped away; it was more than she could bear, and she was so sorry for Octavius. Then Pell up and spake bravely:

“Sir, I would be loth to think of you, my dear oneʼs father, as anything but a gentleman; a strange one, perhaps, but a true one. And so I trust you have only put such a question to me in irony.”

“Pell, there is good stuff in you. I know a man by this time. What would you think of finding your dear oneʼs father a murderer?”

Octavius Pell was not altogether used to this sort of thing. He turned away with some doubt whether Pearl would be a desirable mother of children (for he, after all, was a practical man), and hereditary insanity – Then he turned back, remembering that all mankind are mad. Meanwhile Bull Garnet watched him, with extraordinary wrinkles, and a savage sort of pleasure. He felt himself outside the world, and looking at the stitches of it. But he would not say a word. He had always been a bully, and he meant to keep it up.

“Sir,” said Octave Pell, at last, “you are the very oddest man I ever saw in all my life.”

“Ah, you think so, do you, Pell? Possibly you are right; possibly you are right, Pell. I have no time to think about it. It never struck me in that light. If I am so very odd, perhaps you would rather not have my daughter?”

“If you intend to refuse her to me, you had better say so at once, sir. I donʼt understand all this.”

“I wish you to understand nothing at all beyond the simple fact. I shot Clayton Nowell, and did it on purpose, because I found him insulting her.”

“Good God! You donʼt mean to say it?”

“I never yet said a thing, Pell, which I did not mean to say.”

“You did it in haste? You have repented? For Godʼs sake, tell me that.”

“Treat this as a question of business. Look at the deed and nothing else. Do you still wish to marry my daughter?”

Pell turned away from the great wild eyes now solemnly fixed upon him. His manly heart was full of wonder, anguish, and giddy turbulence. The promptest of us cannot always “come to time,” like a prizefighter.

Pearl came in, with her chest well forward, and then drew back very suddenly. She thought her fate must be settled now, and would like to know how they had settled it. Then, like a genuine English lady, she gave a short sigh and went away. Pride makes the difference between us and all other nations.

But the dignified glance she had cast on Pell settled his fate and hers for life. He saw her noble self–respect, her stately reservation, her deep sense of her own pure value (which never would assert itself), and her passing contempt of his hesitation.

“At all risks I will have her,” he said to himself, for his manly strength gloried in her strong womanhood; “if she can be won I will have her. Oh, how I am degrading her! What a fool–bound fellow I am!”

Then he spoke to her father, who had fallen back, and was faintly gazing, wondering what the stoppage was.

“Sir, I am not worthy of her. God knows how I love her. She is too good for me.”

Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing had often touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter.

Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin.

“I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell. I wish to God you could shave me.”

Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster.

He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him.

“Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain.

*****

Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would – oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong – there it was, and he was welcome.

A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed.

“He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.

Her father raised his languid eyes, until they met Cradockʼs eager ones; there they dwelt with doubt, and wonder, and a slow rejoicing, and a last attempt at expression.

John Rosedew took the wan stiffening hand, lying on the sheet like a cast–off glove, and placed it in Cradockʼs sunburnt palm.

“He knows all,” the parson whispered; “he has read the letter you left for him; and, knowing all, he forgives you.”

“That I do, with all my heart,” Cradock answered firmly. “May God forgive me as I do you. Wholly, purely, for once and for all!”

“Kind – noble – Godlike – ” the dying man said very slowly, but with his old decision.

Bull Garnet could not speak again. The great expansion of heart had been too much for its weakness. Only now and then he looked at Cradock with his Amy, and every look was a prayer for them, and perhaps a recorded blessing.

Then they slipped away, in tears, and left him, as he ought to be, with his children only. And the telegraph of death was that God would never part them.

Now, think you not this man was dying a great deal better than he deserved? No doubt he was. And, for that matter, so perhaps do most of us. But does our Father think so?

CHAPTER XVIII

Softly and quietly fell the mould on the coffin of Bull Garnet. A great tree overhung his sleep, without fear of the woodman. Clayton Nowellʼs simple grave, turfed and very tidy, was only a few yards away. That ancient tree spread forth its arms on this one and the other, as a grandsire lays his hands peacefully and placidly on children who have quarrelled.

A lovely spot, as one might see, for violence to rest in, for long remorse to lose the track, and deep repentance hopefully abide the time of God. To feel the soft mantle of winter return, and the promising gladness of spring, the massive depths of the summer–tide, and the bright disarray of autumn. And to be, no more the while, oppressed, or grieved, or overworked.

There shall forest–children come, joining hands in pleasant fear, and, sitting upon grassy mounds, wonder who inhabits them, wonder who and what it is that cannot wonder any more. And haply they shall tell this tale – become a legend then – when he who writes, and ye who read, are dust.

Ay, and tell it better far, more simply, and more sweetly, never having gone astray from the inborn sympathy. For every grown–up man is apt to mar the uses of his pen with bitter words, and small, and twaddling; conceiting himself to be keen in the first, just in the second, and sage in the third. For all of these let him crave forgiveness of God, his fellow–creatures, and himself, respectively.

Sir Cradock Nowell, still alive to the normal sense of duty, tottered away on John Rosedewʼs arm, from the grave of his half–brother. He had never learned whose hand it was that dug the grave near by, and no one ever forced that unhappy knowledge on him. This last blow, which seemed to strike his chiefest prop from under him, had left its weal on his failing mind in great marks of astonishment. That such a strong, great man should drop, and he, the elder and the weaker, be left to do without him! He was going to the Rectory now, to have a glass of wine, after fatigue of the funeral, a vintage very choice and rare, according to Mr. Rosedew, and newly imported from Oxford. And truly that was its origin. It might have claimed “founderʼs kin fellowship,” like most of the Oxford wine–skins.

“Wonderful, wonderful man!” said poor Sir Cradock, doing his best to keep his back very upright, from a sudden suffusion of memory, – ”to think that he should go first, John! Oh, if I had a son left, he should take that man for his model.”

“Scarcely that,” John Rosedew thought, knowing all the circumstances; “but of the dead I will say no harm.”

“So quick, so ready, so up for anything! Ah, I remember he knocked a man down just at the corner by this gate here, where the dandelion–seed is. And afterwards he proved how richly he deserved it. That is the way to do things, John.”

“I am not quite sure of that,” said the conscientious parson; “it might be wiser to prove that first; and then to abstain from doing it. I remember an instance in point – ”

“Of course you do. You always do, John, and I wish you wouldnʼt. But that has nothing to do with it. You are always cutting me short, John; and worse than ever since you came back, and they talked of you so at Oxford. I hope they have not changed you, John.”

He looked at the white–haired rector, with an old manʼs jealousy. Who else had any right to him?

“My dear old friend,” replied John Rosedew, with kind sorrow in his eyes, “I never meant to cut you short. I will try not to do it again. But I know I am rude sometimes, and I am always sorry afterwards.”

“Nonsense, John; donʼt talk of it. I understand you by this time; and we allow for one another. But now about my son, my poor unlucky boy.”

“To be sure, yes,” said the other old man, not wishing to hurry matters. And so they stopped and probed the hedge instead of one another.

“I donʼt know how it is,” at last Sir Cradock Nowell said, being rather aggrieved with John Rosedew for not breaking ground upon him – ”but how hard those stubs of ash are! Look at that splinter, almost severed by a man who does not know how to splash; Jem, his name is, poor Garnet told me, Jem – something or other – and yet all I can do with my stick wonʼt fetch it away from the stock.”

“Like a child who will not quit his father, however his father has treated him.”

“What do you mean by that, John? Are you driving at me again? I thought you had given it over.”

“I never give over anything,” John answered, in a manner for him quite melodramatic, and beyond his usual key.

“No. We always knew how stubborn you were. And now you are worse than ever.”

“No fool like an old fool,” John Rosedew answered, smiling sweetly, yet with some regret. “Cradock, I am such a fool I shall let out everything.”

“What do you mean?” asked Sir Cradock Nowell, leaning heavily on his staff, and setting his white face rigidly, yet with every line of it ready to melt; “John, I have heard strange rumours, or I have dreamed strange dreams. In the name of God, what is it, John? My son! – my only son – ”

He could say no more, but turned away, and bowed his head, and trembled.

“Your only son, your innocent son, has been at my house these three days; and when you like, you can see him.”

“When I like – ah, to be sure! I donʼt like many people. I am getting very old, John. And no one to come after me. It seems a pity, donʼt you think, and every one against me so?”

“You can take your own part still, my friend. And you have to take your sonʼs part.”

“Yes, to be sure, my sonʼs part. Perhaps he will come back some day. And I know he did not do it, now; and I was very hard to him – donʼt you think I was, John? – very hard to my poor Craddy, and he was so like his mother!”

“But you will be very kind to him now; and he will be such a comfort to you, now he is come back again, and going away no more.”

“I declare you make me shake, John. You do talk such nonsense. One would think you knew all about him, – more than his own father does. What have I done, to be kept like this in the dark, all in the dark? And you seem to think that I was hard to him.”

“Cradock, all you have to do is just to say the word; just to say that you wish to see him, and your son will come and talk to you.”

“Talk to me! Oh yes, I should like to talk to him – very much – I mean, of course, if he is at leisure.”

He leaned on his stick, and tried to think, while John Rosedew hurried off; and of all his thoughts the foremost were, “What will Cradock my boy be like; and what shall I give him for dinner?”

Cradock came up shyly, gently, looking at his father first, then waiting to be looked at. The old man fixed his eyes upon him, at first with some astonishment – for his taste in dress was somewhat outraged by the Broadway style – then, in spite of all the change, remembrance of his son returned, and love, and sense of ownership. Last of all, auctorial pride in the young manʼs width of shoulder, blended with soft recollections of the time he dandled him.

“Why, Cradock! It is my poor son Cradock! What a size you are grown, my boy, my boy!”

“Oh, father, I am sure you want me. Only try me once again. I am not at all a radical.”

“Crad, you never could be. I knew you must come round at last to my way of thinking. When you had seen the world, Crad; when you had seen the world a bit, as your father did before you.”

And so they made the matter up, in politics, and dress, and little touches of religion, and in the depth of kindred love which underlies the latter; and never after was there word, except of migrant petulance, between the crotchety old man, and the son who held his heartʼs key.

All this while we have been loth to turn to Mrs. Corklemore, and contemplate her discomfiture, although in strict sequence of events we ought to have done so long ago. But it is so very painful – and now–a–days all writers agree with Epicurus, in regarding pain as the worst of evils – so bitter is the task to describe a lovely mother failing, in spite of all exertion, to do her duty by her child, in robbing other people, that really – ah well–a–day, physic must be taken.

At the time of her dismissal from the halls of Nowelhurst, Mr. Corklemore had been so glad to see his pretty wife again, and that queer little Flore, who amused him so by pinching his stiff leg, and crying “haw,” and he had found the house so desolate, and the absence of plague so unwholesome, and the responsibility of having a will of his own so horrible, that he scarcely cared to ask the reason why they were come home. And Georgie – who was not thoroughly heartless, else how could she have got on so? – thought Coo Nest very snug and nice, with none to contradict her. So she found relief awhile, in banishing her worse, while she indulged her better half.

Let me do the same by suppressing here that evil tendency to moralise. In Georgieʼs case, as well as mine, the indulgence possessed at any rate the attractions of change and variety. But, knowing how strictly we are bound by the canons of philosophy to suspect and put the curb on every natural bias, that good young woman soon refrained from over–active encouragement of her inclination to goodness. Rallying her sense of right, she vanquished very nobly all the seductions of honesty, and, by a virtuous effort, marched from the Capua of virtue.

She stood upon the wood–crowned heights which look upon Coo Nest, and as the smoke came curling up, the house seemed very small to her. What a thing to call a garden! And the pigeon–house at Nowelhurst was nearly as large as our stable! And oh that little vinery, where one knew every single bunch, and came every day to watch its ripening, and the little fuss of its colouring, like an ogre watching a pet babe roasting. Surely nature never meant her to live upon so small a scale; or why had she been gifted with such large activities?

She turned her back upon Coo Nest, and her face to Nowelhurst Hall, and in her mindʼs eye saw a place ever so much larger.

Then a pleasant sound came up the hollow, a nice ring of revolving wheels coquetting with the best C springs and all the new improvements. Well–mettled horses, too, were there, stepping together sonipedally, and a footman could be seen, whose legs must stand him in 60l. a year.

“That odious old Sir Julius Wallop and his wizen–faced wife come to patronize us again and say, ‘Ha, Corklemore, snug little place, charming situation; but I think I should pull it down and rebuild; no room for Chang to stand in it. And how is my old friend, Sir Cradock, your forty–fifth cousin, I believe? Ah, he has a nice place.’ I havenʼt the heart to meet them now, and their patronizing disparagement. Heigho! It is a nice turn–out. And yet they have at Nowelhurst three more handsome carriages. And it does look so much better to have two footmen there behind; and I do like watered linings so. How nice Flo did look by my side in that new barouche! Oh, my darling child, I must not give way to selfish feelings. I must do my duty towards you.”

Therefore she proceeded, against her better nature, in the face of prudence, with her attempt to set aside poor Sir Cradock Nowell, and obtain fiduciary possession of his property. Cradock was lost in the Taprobane, – of that there could be no doubt; and so she was saved all further trouble of laying before the civil authorities the stronger evidence they required before issuing a warrant. But all was going very nicely towards the commencement of an inquiry as to the old manʼs state of mind. Then suddenly she was checkmated, and never moved a pawn again.

One afternoon, Mrs. Corklemore was sitting in her drawing–room, expecting certain visitors, and quite ready to be bored with them, because they were leading gossips – ladies who gave the first complexion to any nascent narrative. And Georgie knew how to handle them. In the county talk which must ensue, only let them take her side, and all the world would feel for her in her very painful position.

After a rumble of rapid wheels, and a violent pull at the bell, which made the lady of the house to jump, because they had just had the bell–hanger, into her sanctuary came with a cooler than curcumine temperature, not indeed Lady Alberta Smith and her daughter Victorina Beatrice, but Eoa Nowell and her cousin Cradock.

For once in her life Mrs. Corklemore was deprived of all presence of mind, ghostly horror being added to bodily fear of Eoa. She fain would have fled, but her limbs gave way, and she fell back into a soft French chair, and covered her face with both hands. Then Eoa, looking tall and delicate in her simple mourning dress, walked up to her very quietly, leading Cradock as if she were proud of him.

“I have taken the liberty, Mrs. Corklemore, of bringing my cousin Cradock to see you, because it may save trouble.”

“I trust you will forgive,” said Cradock, “our very sudden invasion. We are come upon a matter of business, to save unpleasant exposures and disgrace to our distant relatives.”

“Oh,” gasped poor Mrs. Corklemore, “you are alive, then, after all? It was proved that you had lost your life upon the coast of Africa.”

“Yes, but it has proved otherwise,” Cradock answered, bowing neatly.

“And it would have been so much better, under the sad, sad circumstances, for all people of good feeling, and all interested in the family.”

“For the latter, perhaps it would, madam; but not so clearly for the former. I am here to protect my father from all machinations.”

“Leave her to me,” cried Eoa, slipping prettily in front of him, “I understand her best, because – because of my former vocation. And I think she knows what I am.”

“That I do,” answered Georgie, cleverly interposing first a small enamelled table; “not only an insolent, but an utterly reckless creature.”

“You may think so,” Eoa replied, with calm superiority; “but that only shows your piteous ignorance of the effects of discipline. I am now so sedate and tranquil a woman, that I do not hate, but scorn you.”

Cradock could not help smiling at this, knowing what Eoa was.

“We want no strong expressions, my dear, on one side or the other,” for he saw that a word would have overthrown Eoaʼs new–born discipline; “Mrs. Corklemore is far too clever not to perceive her mistake. She knows quite well that any inquiry as to my dear fatherʼs state of mind can now be of no use to her. And if she thinks of any further proceedings against myself, perhaps she had better first look at just this – just this document.”

He laid before her a certificate, granted by three magistrates, that indisputable evidence had been brought before them as to the cause and manner of Clayton Nowellʼs death, and that Cradock Nowell had no share in it, wittingly or unwittingly. That was the upshot of it; but of course it extended to about fifty–fold the length.

Mrs. Corklemore bent over her, in her most bewitching manner, and perused it very leisurely, as if she were examining Floreʼs attempts at pothooks. Meanwhile, with a side–glint of her eyes, she was watching both of them; and it did not escape her notice that Eoa was very pale.

“To be sure,” she said at last, looking full at the Eastern maid, “I see exactly how it was. I have thought so all along. A female Thug must be charmed, of course, by the only son of a murderer. My dear, I do so congratulate you.”

“Thank you,” answered Eoa, and the deep gaze of her lustrous eyes made the clever woman feel a world unopened to her; “I thank you, Georgie Corklemore, because you know no better. My only wish for you is, that you may never know unhappiness, because you could not bear it.”

Saying so, she turned away, and, with her light, quick step, was gone, before her enemy could see a symptom of the welling tears which then burst all control. But Cradock, who had dwelt in sorrow, compared to which hers was a joke, stayed to say a few soft words, and made a friend for evermore of the woman who had plotted so against his life and all his love.