CHAPTER XXIV
BETSY’S TALE—(Continued.)
“I am only astonished, my dear,” said my nurse, as soon as she had had some tea and toast, and scarcely the soft roe of a red herring, “that you can put up so well, and abide with my instincts in the way you do. None of your family could have done it, to my knowledge of their dispositions, much less the baby that was next above you. But it often comes about to go in turns like that; ‘one, three, five, and seven is sweet, while two, four, and six is a-squalling with their feet.’ But the Lord forgive me for an ill word of them, with their precious little bodies washed, and laying in their patterns till the judgment-day.
“But putting by the words I said in the dirty little room they pleased to call a ‘court,’ and the Testament so filthy that no lips could have a hold of it, my meaning is to tell you, miss, the very things that happened, so that you may fairly judge of them. The Captain came back from going with his father, I am sure, in less than twenty minutes, and smoking a cigar in his elegant way, quite happy and contented, for I saw him down the staircase. As for sign of any haste about him, or wiping of his forehead, or fumbling with his handkerchief, or being in a stew in any sort of way—as the stupid cook who let him in declared, by reason of her own having been at the beer-barrel—solemnly, miss, as I hope to go to heaven, there was nothing of the sort about him.
“He went into the dining-room, and mistress, who had been up stairs to see about the baby, went down to him; and there I heard them talking as pleasant and as natural as they always were together. Not one of them had the smallest sense of trouble hanging over them; and they put away both the decanters and cruets, and came up to bed in their proper order, the master stopping down just to finish his cigar and see to the doors and the bringing up the silver, because there was no man-servant now. And I heard him laughing at some little joke he made as he went into the bedroom. A happier household never went to bed, nor one with better hopes of a happy time to come. And the baby slept beside his parents in his little cot, as his mother liked to have him, with his blessed mouth wide open.
“Now we three (cook and Susan and myself) were accustomed to have a good time of it whenever the master first came home and the mistress was taken up with him. We used to count half an hour more in bed, without any of that wicked bell-clack, and then go on to things according to their order, without any body to say any thing. Accordingly we were all snug in bed, and turning over for another tuck of sleep, when there came a most vicious ringing of the outer bell. ‘You get up, Susan,’ I heard the cook say, for there only was a door between us; and Susan said, ‘Blest if I will! Only Tuesday you put me down about it when the baker came.’ Not a peg would either of them stir, no more than to call names on one another; so I slipped on my things, with the bell going clatter all the while, like the day of judgment. I felt it to be hard upon me, and I went down cross a little—just enough to give it well to a body I were not afraid of.
“But the Lord in His mercy remember me, miss! When I opened the door, I had no blood left. There stood two men, with a hurdle on their shoulders, and on the hurdle a body, with the head hanging down, and the front of it slouching, like a sack that has been stolen from; and behind it there was an authority with two buttons on his back, and he waited for me to say something; but to do so was beyond me. Not a bit of caution or of fear about my sham dress-up, as the bad folk put it afterward; the whole of such thoughts was beyond me outright, and no thought of any thing came inside me, only to wait and wonder.
“‘This corpse belongeth here, as I am informed,’ said the man, who seemed to be the master of it, and was proud to be so. ‘Young woman, don’t you please to stand like that, or every duffer in the parish will be here, and the boys that come hankering after it. You be off!’ he cried out to a boy who was calling some more round the corner. ‘Now, young woman, we must come in if you please, and the least said the soonest mended.’
“‘Oh, but my mistress, my mistress!’ I cried; ‘and her time up, as nigh as may be, any day or night before new moon. ‘Oh, Mr. Constable, Mr. Rural Polishman, take it to the tool shed, if you ever had a wife, Sir.’ Now even this was turned against us as if I had expected it. They said that I must have known who it was, and to a certain length so I did, miss, but only by the dress and the manner of the corpse, and lying with an attitude there was no contradicting.
“I can not tell you now, my dear, exactly how things followed. My mind was gone all hollow with the sudden shock upon it. However, I had thought enough to make no noise immediate, nor tell the other foolish girls, who would have set up bellowing. Having years to deal with little ones brings knowledge of the rest to us. I think that I must have gone to master’s door, where Susan’s orders were to put his shaving water in a tin, and fetched him out, with no disturbance, only in his dressing-gown. And when I told him what it was, his rosy color turned like sheets, and he just said, ‘Hush!’ and nothing more. And guessing what he meant, I ran and put my things on properly.
“But having time to think, the shock began to work upon me, and I was fit for nothing when I saw the children smiling up with their tongues out for their bread and milk, as they used to begin the day with. And I do assure you, Miss Erema, my bitterest thought was of your coming, though unknown whether male or female, but both most inconvenient then, with things in such a state of things. You have much to answer for, miss, about it; but how was you to help it, though?
“The tool-shed door was too narrow to let the hurdle and the body in, and finding some large sea-kale pots standing out of use against the door, the two men (who were tired with the weight and fright, I dare say) set down their burden upon these, under a row of hollyhocks, at the end of the row of bee-hives. And here they wiped their foreheads with some rags they had for handkerchiefs, or one of them with his own sleeve, I should say, and, gaining their breath, they began to talk with the boldness of the sunrise over them. But Mr. Rural Polishman, as he was called in those parts, was walking up and down on guard, and despising of their foolish words.
“My master, the Captain, your father, miss, came out of a window and down the cross-walk, while I was at the green door peeping, for I thought that I might be wanted, if only to take orders what was to be done inside. The constable stiffly touched his hat, and marched to the head of the hurdle, and said,
“‘Do you know this gentleman?’
“Your father took no more notice of him than if he had been a stiff hollyhock, which he might have resembled if he had been good-looking. The Captain thought highly of discipline always, and no kinder gentleman could there be to those who gave his dues to him. But that man’s voice had a low and dirty impertinent sort of a twang with it. Nothing could have been more unlucky. Every thing depended on that fellow in an ignorant neighborhood like that; and his lordship, for such he was now, of course, would not even deign to answer him. He stood over his head in his upright way by a good foot, and ordered him here and there, as the fellow had been expecting, I do believe, to order his lordship. And that made the bitterest enemy of him, being newly sent into these parts, and puffed up with authority. And the two miller’s men could not help grinning, for he had waved them about like a pair of dogs.
“But to suppose that my master ‘was unmoved, and took it brutally’ (as that wretch of a fellow swore afterward), only shows what a stuck-up dolt he was. For when my master had examined his father, and made his poor body be brought in and spread on the couch in the dining-room, and sent me hot-foot for old Dr. Diggory down at the bottom of Shoxford, Susan peeped in through the crack of the door, with the cook to hold her hand behind, and there she saw the Captain on his knees at the side of his father’s corpse, not saying a word, only with his head down. And when the doctor came back with me, with his night-gown positive under his coat, the first thing he said was, ‘My dear Sir—my lord, I mean—don’t take on so; such things will always happen in this world;’ which shows that my master was no brute.
“Then the Captain stood up in his strength and height, without any pride and without any shame, only in the power of a simple heart, and he said words fit to hang him:
“‘This is my doing! There is no one else to blame. If my father is dead, I have killed him!’
“Several of us now were looking in, and the news going out like a winnowing woman with no one to shut the door after her; our passage was crowding with people that should have had a tar-brush in their faces. And of course a good score of them ran away to tell that the Captain had murdered his father. The milk-man stood there with his yoke and cans, and his naily boots on our new oil-cloth, and, not being able to hide himself plainly, he pulled out his slate and began to make his bill.
“‘Away with you all!’ your father said, coming suddenly out of the dining-room, while the doctor was unbuttoning my lord, who was dead with all his day clothes on; and every body brushed away like flies at the depth of his voice and his stature. Then he bolted the door, with only our own people and the doctor and the constable inside. Your mother was sleeping like a lamb, as I could swear, having had a very tiring day the day before, and being well away from the noise of the passage, as well as at a time when they must sleep whenever sleep will come, miss. Bless her gentle heart, what a blessing to be out of all that scare of it!
“All this time, you must understand, there was no sign yet what had happened to his lordship, over and above his being dead. All of us thought, if our minds made bold to think, that it must have pleased the Lord to take his lordship either with an appleplexy or a sudden heart-stroke, or, at any rate, some other gracious way not having any flow of blood in it. But now, while your father was gone up stairs—for he knew that his father was dead enough—to be sure that your mother was quiet, and perhaps to smooth her down for trouble, and while I was run away to stop the ranting of the children, old Dr. Diggory and that rural officer were handling poor Lord Castlewood. They set him to their liking, and they cut his clothes off—so Susan told me afterward—and then they found why they were forced to do so, which I need not try to tell you, miss. Only they found that he was not dead from any wise visitation, but because he had been shot with a bullet through his heart.
“Old Dr. Diggory came out shaking, and without any wholesome sense to meet what had arisen, after all his practice with dead men, and he called out ‘Murder!’ with a long thing in his hand, till my master leaped down the stairs, twelve at a time, and laid his strong hand on the old fool’s mouth.
“‘Would you kill my wife?’ he said; ‘you shall not kill my wife.’
“‘Captain Castlewood,’ the constable answered, pulling out his staff importantly, ‘consider yourself my prisoner.’
“The Captain could have throttled him with one hand, and Susan thought he would have done it. But, instead of that, he said, ‘Very well; do your duty. But let me see what you mean by it.’ Then he walked back again to the body of his father, and saw that he had been murdered.
“But, oh, Miss Erema, you are so pale! Not a bit of food have you had for hours. I ought not to have told you such a deal of it to once. Let me undo all your things, my dear, and give you something cordial; and then lie down and sleep a bit.”
“No, thank you, nurse,” I answered, calling all my little courage back. “No sleep for me until I know every word. And to think of all my father had to see and bear! I am not fit to be his daughter.”
CHAPTER XXV
BETSY’S TALE—(Concluded.)
“Well, now,” continued Mrs. Strouss, as soon as I could persuade her to go on, “if I were to tell you every little thing that went on among them, miss, I should go on from this to this day week, or I might say this day fortnight, and then not half be done with it. And the worst of it is that those little things make all the odds in a case of that sort, showing what the great things were. But only a counselor at the Old Bailey could make head or tail of the goings on that followed.
“For some reason of his own, unknown to any living being but himself, whether it were pride (as I always said) or something deeper (as other people thought), he refused to have any one on earth to help him, when he ought to have had the deepest lawyer to be found. The constable cautioned him to say nothing, as it seems is laid down in their orders, for fear of crimination. And he smiled at this, with a high contempt, very fine to see, but not bodily wise. But even that jack-in-office could perceive that the poor Captain thought of his sick wife up stairs, and his little children, ten times for one thought he ever gave to his own position. And yet I must tell you that he would have no denial, but to know what it was that had killed his parent. When old Dr. Diggory’s hands were shaking so that his instrument would not bite on the thing lodged in his lordship’s back, after passing through and through him, and he was calling for somebody to run for his assistant, who do you think did it for him, Miss Erema? As sure as I sit here, the Captain! His face was like a rock, and his hands no less; and he said, ‘Allow me, doctor. I have been in action.’ And he fetched out the bullet—which showed awful nerve, according to my way of thinking—as if he had been a man with three rows of teeth.
“‘This bullet is just like those of my own pistol!’ he cried, and he sat down hard with amazement. You may suppose how this went against him, when all he desired was to know and tell the truth; and people said that of course he got it out, after a bottleful of doctors failed, because he knew best how it was put in.’
“‘I shall now go and see the place, if you please, or whether you please or not,’ my master said. ‘Constable, you may come and point it out, unless you prefer going to your breakfast. My word is enough that I shall not run away. Otherwise, as you have acted on your own authority, I shall act on mine, and tie you until you have obtained a warrant. Take your choice, my man; and make it quickly, while I offer it.’
“The rural polishman stared at this, being used on the other hand to be made much of. But seeing how capable the Captain was of acting up to any thing, he made a sulky scrape, and said, ‘Sir, as you please for the present,’ weighting his voice on those last three words, as much as to say, ‘Pretty soon you will be handcuffed.’ ‘Then,’ said my master, ‘I shall also insist on the presence of two persons, simply to use their eyes without any fear or favor. One is my gardener, a very honest man, but apt to be late in the morning. The other is a faithful servant, who has been with us for several years. Their names are Jacob Rigg and Betsy Bowen. You may also bring two witnesses, if you choose. And the miller’s men, of course, will come. But order back all others.’
“‘That is perfectly fair and straightforward, my lord,’ the constable answered, falling naturally into abeyance to orders. ‘I am sure that all of us wishes your lordship kindly out of this rum scrape. But my duty is my duty.’
“With a few more words we all set forth, six in number, and no more; for the constable said that the miller’s men, who had first found the late Lord Castlewood, were witnesses enough for him. And Jacob Rigg, whose legs were far apart (as he said) from trenching celery, took us through the kitchen-garden, and out at a gap, which saved every body knowing.
“Then we passed through a copse or two, and across a meadow, and then along the turnpike-road, as far as now I can remember. And along that we went to a stile on the right, without any house for a long way off. And from that stile a foot-path led down a slope of grass land to the little river, and over a hand-bridge, and up another meadow full of trees and bushes, to a gate which came out into the road again a little to this side of the Moonstock Inn, saving a quarter of a mile of road, which ran straight up the valley and turned square at the stone bridge to get to the same inn.
“I can not expect to be clear to you, miss, though I see it all now as I saw it then, every tree, and hump, and hedge of it; only about the distances from this to that, and that to the other, they would be beyond me. You must be on the place itself; and I never could carry distances—no, nor even clever men, I have heard my master say. But when he came to that stile he stopped and turned upon all of us clearly, and as straight as any man of men could be. ‘Here I saw my father last, at a quarter past ten o’clock last night, or within a few minutes of that time.’ I wished to see him to his inn, but he would not let me do so, and he never bore contradiction. He said that he knew the way well, having fished more than thirty years ago up and down this stream. He crossed this stile, and we shook hands over it, and the moon being bright, I looked into his face, and he said, ‘My boy, God bless you!’ Knowing his short ways, I did not even look after him, but turned away, and went straight home along this road. Upon my word as an Englishman, and as an officer of her Majesty, that is all I know of it. Now let us go on to the—to the other place.
“We all of us knew in our hearts, I am sure, that the Captain spoke the simple truth, and his face was grand as he looked at us. But the constable thought it his duty to ask,
“‘Did you hear no sound of a shot, my lord? For he fell within a hundred yards of this.’
“‘I heard no sound of any shot whatever. I heard an owl hooting as I went home, and then the rattle of a heavy wagon, and the bells of horses. I have said enough. Let us go forward.’
“We obeyed him at once; and even the constable looked right and left, as if he had been wrong. He signed to the miller’s man to lead the way, and my lord walked proudly after him. The path was only a little narrow track, with the grass, like a front of hair, falling over it on the upper side and on the under, dropping away like side curls; such a little path that I was wondering how a great lord could walk over it. Then we came down a steep place to a narrow bridge across a shallow river—abridge made of only two planks and a rail, with a prop or two to carry them. And one end of the handrail was fastened into a hollow and stubby old hawthorn-tree, overhanging the bridge and the water a good way. And just above this tree, and under its shadow, there came a dry cut into the little river, not more than a yard or two above the wooden bridge, a water-trough such as we have in Wales, miss, for the water to run in, when the farmer pleases; but now there was no water in it, only gravel.
“The cleverest of the miller’s men, though, neither of them had much intellect, stepped down at a beck from the constable, right beneath the old ancient tree, and showed us the marks on the grass and the gravel made by his lordship where he fell and lay. And it seemed that he must have fallen off the bridge, yet not into the water, but so as to have room for his body, if you see, miss, partly on the bank, and partly in the hollow of the meadow trough.
“‘Have you searched the place well?’ the Captain asked. ‘Have you found any weapon or implement?’
“‘We have found nothing but the corpse, so far,’ the constable answered, in a surly voice, not liking to be taught his business. ‘My first duty was to save life, if I could. These men, upon finding the body, ran for me, and knowing who it was, I came with it to your house.’
“‘You acted for the best, my man. Now search the place carefully, while I stand here. I am on my parole, I shall not run away. Jacob, go down and help them.’
“Whether from being in the army, or what, your father always spoke in such a way that the most stiff-neckedest people began without thinking to obey him. So the constable and the rest went down, while the Captain and I stood upon the plank, looking at the four of them.
“For a long time they looked about, according to their attitudes, without finding any thing more than the signs of the manner in which the poor lord fell, and of these the constable pulled out a book and made a pencil memorial. But presently Jacob, a spry sort of man, cried, ‘Hulloa! whatever have I got hold of here? Many a good craw-fish have I pulled out from this bank when the water comes down the gully, but never one exactly like this here afore.’
“‘Name of the Lord!’ cried the constable, jumping behind the hawthorn stump; ‘don’t point it at me, you looby! It’s loaded, loaded one barrel, don’t you see? Put it down, with the muzzle away from me.’
“‘Hand it to me, Jacob,’ the Captain said. ‘You understand a gun, and this goes off just the same.’ Constable Jobbins have no fear. ‘Yes, it is exactly as I thought. This pistol is one of the double-barreled pair which I bought to take to India. The barrels are rifled; it shoots as true as any rifle, and almost as hard up to fifty yards. The right barrel has been fired, the other is still loaded. The bullet I took from my father’s body most certainly came from this pistol.’
“‘Can ‘e say, can ‘e say then, who done it, master?’ asked Jacob, a man very sparing of speech, but ready at a beck to jump at constable and miller’s men, if only law was with him. ‘Can ‘e give a clear account, and let me chuck ‘un in the river?’
“‘No, Jacob, I can do nothing of the kind,’ your father answered; while the rural man came up and faced things, not being afraid of a fight half so much as he was of an accident; by reason of his own mother having been blown up by a gunpowder start at Dartford, yet came down all right, miss, and had him three months afterward, according to his own confession; nevertheless, he came up now as if he had always been upright, in the world, and he said, ‘My lord, can you explain all this?’
“Your father looked at him with one of his strange gazes, as if he were measuring the man while trying his own inward doing of his own mind. Proud as your father was, as proud as ever can be without cruelty, it is my firm belief, Miss Erema, going on a woman’s judgment, that if the man’s eyes had come up to my master’s sense of what was virtuous, my master would have up and told him the depth and contents of his mind and heart, although totally gone beyond him.
“But Jobbins looked back at my lord with a grin, and his little eyes, hard to put up with. ‘Have you nothing to say, my lord? Then I am afeared I must ask you just to come along of me.’ And my master went with him, miss, as quiet as a lamb; which Jobbins said, and even Jacob fancied, was a conscience sign of guilt.
“Now after I have told you all this, Miss Erema, you know very nearly as much as I do. To tell how the grief was broken to your mother, and what her state of mind was, and how she sat up on the pillows and cried, while things went on from bad to worse, and a verdict of ‘willful murder’ was brought against your father by the crowner’s men, and you come headlong, without so much as the birds in the ivy to chirp about you, right into the thick of the worst of it. I do assure you, Miss Erema, when I look at your bright eyes and clear figure, the Lord in heaven, who has made many cripples, must have looked down special to have brought you as you are. For trouble upon trouble fell in heaps, faster than I can wipe my eyes to think. To begin with, all the servants but myself and gardener Jacob ran away. They said that the old lord haunted the house, and walked with his hand in the middle of his heart, pulling out a bullet if he met any body, and sighing ‘murder’ three times, till every hair was crawling. I took it on myself to fetch the Vicar of the parish to lay the evil spirit, as they do in Wales. A nice kind gentleman he was as you could see, and wore a velvet skull-cap, and waited with his legs up. But whether he felt that the power was not in him, or whether his old lordship was frightened of the Church, they never made any opportunity between them to meet and have it out, miss.
“Then it seemed as if Heaven, to avenge his lordship, rained down pestilence upon that house. A horrible disease, the worst I ever met, broke out upon the little harmless dears, the pride of my heart and of every body’s eyes, for lovelier or better ones never came from heaven. They was all gone to heaven in a fortnight and three days, and laid in the church-yard at one another’s side, with little beds of mould to the measure of their stature, and their little carts and drums, as they made me promise, ready for the judgment-day. Oh, my heart was broken, miss, my heart was broken! I cried so, I thought I could never cry more.
“But when your dear mother, who knew nothing of all this (for we put all their illness, by the doctor’s orders, away at the further end of the house), when she was a little better of grievous pain and misery (for being so upset her time was hard), when she sat up on the pillow, looking like a bride almost, except that she had what brides hasn’t—a little red thing in white flannel at her side—then she says to me, ‘I am ready, Betsy; it is high time for all of them to see their little sister. They always love the baby so, whenever there is a new one. And they are such men and women to it. They have been so good this time that I have never heard them once. And I am sure that I can trust them, Betsy, not to make the baby cry. I do so long to see the darlings. Now do not even whisper to them not to make a noise. They are too good to require it; and it would hurt their little feelings.’
“I had better have been shot, my dear, according as the old lord was, than have the pain that went through all my heart, to see the mother so. She sat up, leaning on one arm, with the hand of the other round your little head, and her beautiful hair was come out of its loops, and the color in her cheeks was like a shell. Past the fringe of the curtain, and behind it too, her soft bright eyes were a-looking here and there for the first to come in of her children. The Lord only knows what lies I told her, so as to be satisfied without them. First I said they were all gone for a walk; and then that the doctor had ordered them away; and then that they had got the measles. That last she believed, because it was worse than what I had said before of them; and she begged to see Dr. Diggory about it, and I promised that she should as soon as he had done his dinner. And then, with a little sigh, being very weak, she went down into her nest again, with only you to keep her company.
“Well, that was bad enough, as any mortal sufferer might have said; enough for one day at any rate. But there was almost worse to come. For when I was having a little sit down stairs, with my supper and half pint of ale (that comes like drawing a long breath to us when spared out of sickrooms, miss), and having no nursery now on my mind, was thinking of all the sad business, with only a little girl in the back kitchen come in to muck up the dishes, there appeared a good knock at the garden door, and I knew it for the thumb of the Captain. I locked the young girl up, by knowing what their tongues are, and then I let your father in, and the candle-sight of him made my heart go low.
“He had come out of prison; and although not being tried, his clothes were still in decency, they had great holes in them, and the gloss all gone to a smell of mere hedges and ditches. The hat on his head was quite out of the fashion, even if it could be called a hat at all, and his beautiful beard had no sign of a comb, and he looked as old again as he had looked a month ago.
“‘I know all about it. You need not be afraid,’ he said, as I took him to the breakfast-room, where no one up stairs could hear us. ‘I know that my children are all dead and buried, except the one that was not born yet. Ill news flies quick. I know all about it. George, Henrietta, Jack, Alf, little Vi, and Tiny. I have seen their graves and counted them, while the fool of a policeman beat his gloves through the hedge within a rod of me. Oh yes, I have much to be thankful for. My life is in my own hand now.’
“‘Oh, master; oh, Captain; oh, my lord!’ I cried; ‘for the sake of God in heaven, don’t talk like that. Think of your sweet wife, your dear lady.’
“‘Betsy,’ he answered, with his eyes full upon me, noble, yet frightful to look at, ‘I am come to see my wife. Go and let her know it, according to your own discretion.’
“My discretion would have been not to let him see her, but go on and write to her from foreign countries, with the salt sea between them; but I give you my word that I had no discretion, but from pity and majesty obeyed him. I knew that he must have broken prison, and by good rights ought to be starving. But I could no more offer him the cold ham and pullet than take him by his beard and shake him.
“‘Is he come, at last, at last?’ my poor mistress said, whose wits were wandering after her children. ‘At last, at last! Then he will find them all.’
“‘Yes, ma’am, at last, at the last he will,’ I answered, while I thought of the burial service, which I had heard three times in a week—for the little ones went to their graves in pairs to save ceremony; likewise of the Epistle of Saint Paul, which is not like our Lord’s way of talking at all, but arguing instead of comforting. And not to catch her up in that weak state, I said, ‘He will find every one of them, ma’am.’
“‘Oh, but I want him for himself, for himself, as much as all the rest put together,’ my dear lady said, without listening to me, but putting her hand to her ear to hearken for even so much as a mouse on the stairs. ‘Do bring him, Betsy; only bring him, Betsy, and then let me go where my children are.’