Loe raamatut: «The Flight of the Shadow», lehekülg 9

CHAPTER XXV. A VERY STRANGE THING

The moment I opened the door of the study, I saw my uncle—in his think-chair, his head against the back of it, his face turned to the ceiling. I ran to his side and dropped on my knees, thinking he was dead. He opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a wan, woe-begone countenance, that I burst into a passion of tears.

“What is it, uncle dear?” I gasped and sobbed.

“Nothing very new, little one,” he answered.

“It is something terrible, uncle,” I cried, “or you would not look like that! Did those horrid men hurt you? You did give it them well! You came down on them like the angel on the Assyrians!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, little one!” he returned. “What men?”

“The men that came with John’s mother to carry him off. If it hadn’t been for my beautiful uncle, they would have done it too! How I wondered what had become of you! I was almost in despair. I thought you had left us to ourselves—and you only waiting, like God, for the right moment!”

He sat up, and stared at me, bewildered.

“I had forgotten all about John!” he said.

“As to what you think I did, I know nothing about it. I haven’t been out of this room since I saw—that spectre in the kitchen.”

“John’s mother, you mean, uncle?”

“Ah! she’s John’s mother, is she? Yes, I thought as much—and it was more than my poor brain could stand! It was too terrible!—My little one, this is death to you and me!”

My heart sank within me. One thought only went through my head—that, come what might, I would no more give up John, than if I were already married to him in the church.

“But why—what is it, uncle?” I said, hardly able to get the words out.

“I will tell you another time,” he answered, and rising, went to the door.

“John is going to London,” I said, following him.

“Is he?” he returned listlessly.

“He wants to see his lawyer, and try to get things on a footing of some sort between his mother and him.”

“That is very proper,” he replied, with his hand on the lock.

“But you don’t think it would be safe for him to travel to-night—do you, uncle—so soon after his illness?” I asked.

“No, I cannot say I do. It would not be safe. He is welcome to stop till to-morrow.”

“Will you not tell him so, uncle? He is bent on going!”

“I would rather not see him! There is no occasion. It will be a great relief to me when he is able—quite able, I mean—to go home to his mother—or where it may suit him best.”

It was indeed like death to hear my uncle talk so differently about John. What had he done to be treated in this way—taken up and made a friend of, and then cast off without reason given! My dear uncle was not at all like himself! To say he forgot our trouble and danger, and never came near us in our sore peril, when we owed our deliverance to him! and now to speak like this concerning John! Something was terribly wrong with him! I dared hardly think what it could be.

I stood speechless.

My uncle opened the door, and went down the steps. The sound of his feet along the corridor and down the stair to the kitchen, died away in my ears. My life seemed to go ebbing with it. I was stranded on a desert shore, and he in whom I had trusted was leaving me there!

I came to myself a little, got the two five-pound-notes, and returned to John.

When I reached the door of the room, I found my heart in my throat, and my brains upside down. What was I to say to him? How could I let him go away so late? and how could I let him stay where his departure would be a relief? Even I would have him gone from where he was not wanted! I saw, however, that my uncle must not have John’s death at his door—that I must persuade him to stay the night. I went in, and gave him the notes, but begged him, for my love, to go to bed. In the morning, I said, I would drive him to the station.

He yielded with difficulty—but with how little suspicion that all the time I wished him gone! I went to bed only to lie listening for my uncle’s return. It was long past midnight ere he came.

In the morning I sent Penny to order the phaeton, and then ran to my uncle’s room, in the hope he would want to see John before he left: I was not sure he had realized that he was going.

He was neither in his bed-room nor in the study. I went to the stable. Dick was putting the horse to the phaeton. He told me he had heard his master, two hours before, saddle Thanatos, and ride away. This made me yet more anxious about him. He did not often ride out early—seldom indeed after coming home late! Things seemed to threaten complication!

John looked so much better, and was so eager after the projected interview with his lawyer, that I felt comforted concerning him. I did not tell him what my uncle had said the night before. It would, I felt, be wrong to mention what my uncle might wish forgotten; and as I did not know what he meant, it could serve no end. We parted at the station very much as if we had been married half a century, and I returned home to brood over the strange things that had happened. But before long I found myself in a weltering swamp of futile speculation, and turned my thoughts perforce into other channels, lest I should lose the power of thinking, and be drowned in reverie: my uncle had taught me that reverie is Phaeton in the chariot of Apollo.

The weary hours passed, and my uncle did not come. I had never before been really uneasy at his longest absence; but now I was far more anxious about him than about John. Alas, through me fresh trouble had befallen my uncle as well as John! When the night came, I went to bed, for I was very tired: I must keep myself strong, for something unfriendly was on its way, and I must be able to meet it! I knew well I should not sleep until I heard the sounds of his arrival: those came about one o’clock, and in a moment I was dreaming.

In my dream I was still awake, and still watching for my uncle’s return. I heard the sound of Death’s hoofs, not on the stones of the yard, but on the gravel before the house, and coming round the house till under my window. There he stopped, and I heard my uncle call to me to come down: he wanted me. In my dream I was a child; I sprang out of bed, ran from the house on my bare feet, jumped into his down-stretched arms, and was in a moment seated in front of him. Death gave a great plunge, and went off like the wind, cleared the gate in a flying stride, and rushed up the hill to the heath. The wind was blowing behind us furiously: I could hear it roaring, but did not feel it, for it could not overtake us; we out-stripped and kept ahead of it; if for a moment we slackened speed, it fell upon us raging.

We came at length to the pool near the heart of the heath, and I wondered that, at the speed we were making, we had been such a time in reaching it. It was the dismalest spot, with its crumbling peaty banks, and its water brown as tea. Tradition declared it had no bottom—went down into nowhere.

“Here,” said my uncle, bringing his horse to a sudden halt, “we had a terrible battle once, Death and I, with the worm that lives in this hole. You know what worm it is, do you not?”

I had heard of the worm, and any time I happened, in galloping about the heath, to find myself near the pool, the thought would always come back with a fresh shudder—what if the legend were a true one, and the worm was down there biding his time! but anything more about the worm I had never heard.

“No, uncle,” I answered; “I don’t know what worm it is.”

“Ah,” he answered, with a sigh, “if you do not take the more care, little one, you will some day learn, not what the worm is called, but what it is! The worm that lives there, is the worm that never dies.”

I gave a shriek; I had never heard of the horrible creature before—so it seemed in my dream. To think of its being so near us, and never dying, was too terrible.

“Don’t be frightened, little one,” he said, pressing me closer to his bosom. “Death and I killed it. Come with me to the other side, and you will see it lying there, stiff and stark.”

“But, uncle,” I said, “how can it be dead—how can you have killed it, if it never dies?”

“Ah, that is the mystery!” he returned.

“But come and see. It was a terrible fight. I never had such a fight—or dear old Death either. But she’s dead now! It was worth living for, to make away with such a monster!”

We rode round the pool, cautiously because of the crumbling banks, to see the worm lie dead. On and on we rode. I began to think we must have ridden many times round the hole.

“I wonder where it can be, uncle!” I said at length.

“We shall come to it very soon,” he answered.

“But,” I said, “mayn’t we have ridden past it without seeing it?”

He laughed a loud and terrible laugh.

“When once you have seen it, little one,” he replied, “you too will laugh at the notion of having ridden past it without seeing it. The worm that never dies is hardly a thing to escape notice!”

We rode on and on. All at once my uncle threw up his hands, dropping the reins, and with a fearful cry covered his face.

“It is gone! I have not killed it! No, I have not! It is here! it is here!” he cried, pressing his hand to his heart. “It is here, and it was here all the time I thought it dead! What will become of me! I am lost, lost!”

At the word, old Death gave a scream, and laying himself out, flew with all the might of his swift limbs to get away from the place. But the wind, which was behind us as we came, now stormed in our faces; and presently I saw we should never reach home, for, with all Death’s fierce endeavour, we moved but an inch or two in the minute, and that with a killing struggle.

“Little one,” said my uncle, “if you don’t get down we shall all be lost. I feel the worm rising. It is your weight that keeps poor Death from making any progress.”

I turned my head, leaning past my uncle, so as to see behind him. A long neck, surmounted by a head of indescribable horror, was slowly rising straight up out of the middle of the pool. It should not catch them! I slid down by my uncle’s leg. The moment I touched the ground and let go, away went Death, and in an instant was out of sight. I was not afraid. My heart was lifted up with the thought that I was going to die for my uncle and old Death. The red worm was on the bank. It was crawling toward me. I went to meet it. It sprang from the ground, threw itself upon me, and twisted itself about me. It was a human embrace, the embrace of some one unknown that loved me!

I awoke and left the dream. But the dream never left me.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE EVIL DRAWS NIGHER

I rose early, and went to my uncle’s room. He was awake, but complained of headache. I took him a cup of tea, and at his request left him.

About noon Martha brought me a letter where I sat alone in the drawing-room. I carried it to my uncle. He took it with a trembling hand, read it, and fell back with his eyes closed. I ran for brandy.

“Don’t be frightened, little one,” he called after me. “I don’t want anything.”

“Won’t you tell me what is the matter, uncle?” I said, returning. “Is it necessary I should be kept ignorant?”

“Not at all, my little one.”

“Don’t you think, uncle,” I dared to continue, forgetting in my love all difference of years, “that, whatever it be that troubles us, it must be better those who love us should know it? Is there some good in a secret after all?”

“None, my darling,” he answered. “The thing that made me talk to you so against secrets when you were a child, was, that I had one myself—one that was, and is, eating the heart out of me. But that woman shall not know and you be ignorant! I will not have a secret with her!—Leave me now, please, little one.”

I rose at once.

“May I take the letter with me, uncle?” I asked.

He rubbed his forehead with a still trembling hand. The trembling of that beloved hand filled me with such a divine sense of pity, that for the first time I seemed to know God, causing in me that consciousness! The whole human mother was roused in me for my uncle. I would die, I would kill to save him! The worm was welcome to swallow me! My very being was a well of loving pity, pouring itself out over that trembling hand.

He took up the letter, gave it to me, and turned his face away with a groan. I left the room in strange exaltation—the exaltation of merest love.

I went to the study, and there read the hateful letter.

Here it is. Having transcribed it, I shall destroy it.

“Sir,—For one who persists in coming between a woman and her son, who will blame the mother if she cast aside forbearance! I would have spared you as hitherto; I will spare you no longer. You little thought when you crossed me who I was—the one in the world in whose power you lay! I would perish ever-lastingly rather than permit one of my blood to marry one of yours. My words are strong; you are welcome to call them unladylike; but you shall not doubt what I mean. You know perfectly that, if I denounce you as a murderer, I can prove what I say; and as to my silence for so many years, I am able thoroughly to account for it. I shall give you no further warning. You know where my son is: if he is not in my house within two days, I shall have you arrested. I have made up my mind.

“Lucretia Cairnedge.

“Rising-Manor, July 15, 18—.”

“Whoever be the father, she’s the mother of lies!” I exclaimed.—“My uncle—the best and gentlest of men, a murderer!”

I laughed aloud in my indignation and wrath.

But, though the woman was a liar, she must have something to say with a show of truth! How else would she dare intimidation with such a man? How else could her threat have so wrought upon my uncle? What did she know, or imagine she knew? What could be the something on which she founded her lie?—That my uncle was going to tell me, nor did I dread hearing his story. No revelation would lower him in my eyes! Of that I was confident. But I little thought how long it would be before it came, or what a terrible tale it would prove.

I ran down the stair with the vile paper in my hand.

“The wicked woman!” I cried. “If she be John’s mother, I don’t care: she’s a devil and a liar!”

“Hush, hush, little one!” said my uncle, with a smile in which the sadness seemed to intensify the sweetness; “you do not know anything against her! You do not know she is a liar!”

“There are things, uncle, one knows without knowing!”

“What if I said she told no lie?”

“I should say she was a liar although she told no lie. My uncle is not what she threatens to say he is!”

“But men have repented, and grown so different you would not know them: how can you tell it has not been so with me? I may have been a bad man once, and grown better!”

“I know you are trying to prepare me for what you think will be a shock, uncle!” I answered; “but I want no preparing. Out with your worst! I defy you!”

Ah me, confident! But I had not to repent of my confidence!

My uncle gave a great sigh. He looked as if there was nothing for him now but tell all. Evidently he shrank from the task.

He put his hand over his eyes, and said slowly,—

“You belong to a world, little one, of which you know next to nothing. More than Satan have fallen as lightning from heaven!”

He lay silent so long that I was constrained to speak again.

“Well, uncle dear,” I said, “are you not going to tell me?”

“I cannot,” he answered.

There was absolute silence for, I should think, about twenty minutes. I could not and would not urge him to speak. What right had I to rouse a killing effort! He was not bound to tell me anything! But I mourned the impossibility of doing my best for him, poor as that best might be.

“Do not think, my darling,” he said at last, and laid his hand on my head as I knelt beside him, “that I have the least difficulty in trusting you; it is only in telling you. I would trust you with my eternal soul. You can see well enough there is something terrible to tell, for would I not otherwise laugh to scorn the threat of that bad woman? No one on the earth has so little right to say what she knows of me. Yet I do share a secret with her which feels as if it would burst my heart. I wish it would. That would open the one way out of all my trouble. Believe me, little one, if any ever needed God, I need him. I need the pardon that goes hand in hand with righteous judgment, the pardon of him who alone can make lawful excuse.”

“May God be your judge, uncle, and neither man nor woman!”

“I do not think you would altogether condemn me, little one, much as I loathe myself—terribly as I deserve condemnation.”

“Condemn you, uncle! I want to know all, just to show you that nothing can make the least difference. If you were as bad as that bad woman says, you should find there was one of your own blood who knew what love meant. But I know you are good, uncle, whatever you may have done.”

“Little one, you comfort me,” sighed my uncle. “I cannot tell you this thing, for when I had told it, I should want to kill myself more than ever. But neither can I bear that you should not know it. I will not have a secret with that woman! I have always intended to tell you everything. I have the whole fearful story set down for your eyes—and those of any you may wish to see it: I cannot speak the words into your ears. The paper I will give you now; but you will not open it until I give you leave.”

“Certainly not, uncle.”

“If I should die before you have read it, I permit and desire you to read it. I know your loyalty so well, that I believe you would not look at it even after my death, if I had not given you permission. There are those who treat the dead as if they had no more rights of any kind. ‘Get away to Hades,’ they say; ‘you are nothing now.’ But you will not behave so to your uncle, little one! When the time comes for you to read my story, remember that I now, in preparation for the knowledge that will give you, ask you to pardon me then for all the pain it will cause you and your husband—John being that husband. I have tried to do my best for you, Orbie: how much better I might have done had I had a clear conscience, God only knows. It may be that I was the tenderer uncle that I could not be a better one.”

He hid his face in his hands, and burst into a tempest of weeping.

It was terrible to see the man to whom I had all my life looked with a reverence that prepared me for knowing the great father, weeping like a bitterly repentant and self-abhorrent child. It seemed sacrilege to be present. I felt as if my eyes, only for seeing him thus, deserved the ravens to pick them out.

I could not contain myself. I rose and threw my arms about him, got close to him as a child to her mother, and, as soon as the passion of my love would let me, sobbed out,

“Uncle! darling uncle! I love you more than ever! I did not know before that I could love so much! I could kill that woman with my own hands! I wish I had killed her when I pulled her down that day! It is right to kill poisonous creatures: she is worse than any snake!”

He smiled a sad little smile, and shook his head. Then first I seemed to understand a little. A dull flash went through me.

I stood up, drew back, and gazed at him. My eyes fixed themselves on his. I stared into them. He had ceased to weep, and lay regarding me with calm response.

“You don’t mean, uncle,—?”

“Yes, little one, I do. That woman was the cause of the action for which she threatens to denounce me as a murderer. I do not say she intended to bring it about; but none the less was she the consciously wicked and wilful cause of it.—And you will marry her son, and be her daughter!” he added, with a groan as of one in unutterable despair.

I sprang back from him. My very proximity was a pollution to him while he believed such a thing of me!

“Never, uncle, never!” I cried. “How can you think so ill of one who loves you as I do! I will denounce her! She will be hanged, and we shall be at peace!”

“And John?” said my uncle.

“John must look after himself!” I answered fiercely. “Because he chooses to have such a mother, am I to bring her a hair’s-breadth nearer to my uncle! Not for any man that ever was born! John must discard his mother, or he and I are as we were! A mother! She is a hyena, a shark, a monster! Uncle, she is a devil!—I don’t care! It is true; and what is true is the right thing to say. I will go to her, and tell her to her face what she is!”

I turned and made for the door. My heart felt as big as the biggest man’s.

“If she kill you, little one,” said my uncle quietly, “I shall be left with nobody to take care of me!”

I burst into fresh tears. I saw that I was a fool, and could do nothing.

“Poor John!—To have such a mother!” I sobbed. Then in a rage of rebellion I cried, “I don’t believe she is his mother! Is it possible now, uncle—does it stand to reason, that such a pestilence of a woman should ever have borne such a child as my John? I don’t, I can’t, I won’t believe it!”

“I am afraid there are mysteries in the world quite as hard to explain!” replied my uncle.

“I confess, if I had known who was his mother, I should have been far from ready to yield my consent to your engagement.”

“What does it matter?” I said. “Of course I shall not marry him!”

“Not marry him, child!” returned my uncle. “What are you thinking of? Is the poor fellow to suffer for, as well as by the sins of his mother?”

“If you think, uncle, that I will bring you into any kind of relation with that horrible woman, if the worst of it were only that you would have to see her once because she was my husband’s mother, you are mistaken. She to threaten you if you did not send back her son, as if John were a horse you had stolen! You have been the angel of God about me all the days of my life, but even to please you, I cannot consent to despise myself. Besides, you know what she threatens!”

“She shall not hurt me. I will take care of myself for your sakes. Your life shall not be clouded by scandal about your uncle.”

“How are you to prevent it, uncle dear? Fulfil her threat or not, she would be sure to talk!”

“When she sees it can serve no purpose, she will hardly risk reprisals.”

“She will certainly not risk them when she finds we have said good-bye.”

“But how would that serve me, little one? What! would you heap on your uncle’s conscience, already overburdened, the misery of keeping two lovely lovers apart? I will tell you what I have resolved upon. I will have no more secrets from you, Orba. Oh, how I thank you, dearest, for not casting me off!”

Again I threw myself on my knees by his bed.

“Uncle,” I cried, my heart ready to break with the effort to show itself, “if I did not now love you more than ever, I should deserve to be cast out, and trodden under foot!—What do you think of doing?”

“I shall leave the country, not to return while the woman lives.”

“I’m ready, uncle,” I said, springing to my feet; “—at least I shall be in a few minutes!”

“But hear me out, little one,” he rejoined, with a smile of genuine pleasure; “you don’t know half my plan yet. How am I to live abroad, if my property go to rack and ruin? Listen, and don’t say anything till I have done; I have no time to lose; I must get up at once.—As soon as I am on board at Dover for Paris, you and John must get yourselves married the first possible moment, and settle down here—to make the best of the farm you can, and send me what you can spare. I shall not want much, and John will have his own soon. I know you will be good to Martha!”

“John may take the farm if he will. It would be immeasurably better than living with his mother. For me, I am going with my uncle. Why, uncle, I should be miserable in John’s very arms and you out of the country for our sakes! Is there to be nobody in the world but husbands, forsooth! I should love John ever so much more away with you and my duty, than if I had him with me, and you a wanderer. How happy I shall be, thinking of John, and taking care of you!”

He let me run on. When I stopped at length—

“In any case,” he said with a smile, “we cannot do much till I am dressed!”