Leaving the favoured, and well-received, and flattered of the
world; him of the world most worldly, who never compromised himself by an
ungentlemanly action, and never was guilty of a manly one; to lie smilingly
asleep--for even sleep, working but little change in his dissembling face,
became with him a piece of cold, conventional hypocrisy--we follow in the steps
of two slow travellers on foot, making towards Chigwell.
Barnaby and his mother. Grip in their company, of course.
The widow, to whom each painful mile seemed longer than the last, toiled
wearily along; while Barnaby, yielding to every inconstant impulse, fluttered
here and there, now leaving her far behind, now lingering far behind himself,
now darting into some by-lane or path and leaving her to pursue her way alone,
until he stealthily emerged again and came upon her with a wild shout of
merriment, as his wayward and capricious nature prompted. Now he would call to
her from the topmost branch of some high tree by the roadside; now using his
tall staff as a leaping-pole, come flying over ditch or hedge or five-barred
gate; now run with surprising swiftness for a mile or more on the straight road,
and halting, sport upon a patch of grass with Grip till she came up. These were
his delights; and when his patient mother heard his merry voice, or looked into
his flushed and healthy face, she would not have abated them by one sad word or
murmur, though each had been to her a source of suffering in the same degree as
it was to him of pleasure.
It is something to look upon enjoyment, so that it be free and wild and in
the face of nature, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. It is something
to know that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such a creature's
breast; it is something to be assured that, however lightly men may crush that
faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts it even to his
despised and slighted work. Who would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the
sunlight, than a wise man pining in a darkened jail!
Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence
with an eternal frown; read in the Everlasting Book, wide open to your view, the
lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and sombre hues, but bright
and glowing tints; its music--save when ye drown it--is not in sighs and groans,
but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air,
and find one dismal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and
pleasure which every glad return of day awakens in the breast of all your kind
who have not changed their nature; and learn some wisdom even from the witless,
when their hearts are lifted up they know not why, by all the mirth and
happiness it brings.
The widow's breast was full of care, was laden heavily with secret dread and
sorrow; but her boy's gaiety of heart gladdened her, and beguiled the long
journey. Sometimes he would bid her lean upon his arm, and would keep beside her
steadily for a short distance; but it was more his nature to be rambling to and
fro, and she better liked to see him free and happy, even than to have him near
her, because she loved him better than herself.
She had quitted the place to which they were travelling, directly after the
event which had changed her whole existence; and for two- and-twenty years had
never had courage to revisit it. It was her native village. How many
recollections crowded on her mind when it appeared in sight!
Two-and-twenty years. Her boy's whole life and history. The last time she
looked back upon those roofs among the trees, she carried him in her arms, an
infant. How often since that time had she sat beside him night and day, watching
for the dawn of mind that never came; how had she feared, and doubted, and yet
hoped, long after conviction forced itself upon her! The little stratagems she
had devised to try him, the little tokens he had given in his childish way--not
of dulness but of something infinitely worse, so ghastly and unchildlike in its
cunning--came back as vividly as if but yesterday had intervened. The room in
which they used to be; the spot in which his cradle stood; he, old and
elfin-like in face, but ever dear to her, gazing at her with a wild and vacant
eye, and crooning some uncouth song as she sat by and rocked him; every
circumstance of his infancy came thronging back, and the most trivial, perhaps,
the most distinctly.
His older childhood, too; the strange imaginings he had; his terror of
certain senseless things--familiar objects he endowed with life; the slow and
gradual breaking out of that one horror, in which, before his birth, his
darkened intellect began; how, in the midst of all, she had found some hope and
comfort in his being unlike another child, and had gone on almost believing in
the slow development of his mind until he grew a man, and then his childhood was
complete and lasting; one after another, all these old thoughts sprung up within
her, strong after their long slumber and bitterer than ever.
She took his arm and they hurried through the village street. It was the same
as it was wont to be in old times, yet different too, and wore another air. The
change was in herself, not it; but she never thought of that, and wondered at
its alteration, and where it lay, and what it was.
The people all knew Barnaby, and the children of the place came flocking
round him--as she remembered to have done with their fathers and mothers round
some silly beggarman, when a child herself. None of them knew her; they passed
each well-remembered house, and yard, and homestead; and striking into the
fields, were soon alone again.
The Warren was the end of their journey. Mr Haredale was walking in the
garden, and seeing them as they passed the iron gate, unlocked it, and bade them
enter that way.
'At length you have mustered heart to visit the old place,' he said to the
widow. 'I am glad you have.'
'For the first time, and the last, sir,' she replied.
'The first for many years, but not the last?'
'The very last.'
'You mean,' said Mr Haredale, regarding her with some surprise, 'that having
made this effort, you are resolved not to persevere and are determined to
relapse? This is unworthy of you. I have often told you, you should return here.
You would be happier here than elsewhere, I know. As to Barnaby, it's quite his
home.'
'And Grip's,' said Barnaby, holding the basket open. The raven hopped gravely
out, and perching on his shoulder and addressing himself to Mr Haredale,
cried--as a hint, perhaps, that some temperate refreshment would be
acceptable--'Polly put the ket-tle on, we'll all have tea!'
'Hear me, Mary,' said Mr Haredale kindly, as he motioned her to walk with him
towards the house. 'Your life has been an example of patience and fortitude,
except in this one particular which has often given me great pain. It is enough
to know that you were cruelly involved in the calamity which deprived me of an
only brother, and Emma of her father, without being obliged to suppose (as I
sometimes am) that you associate us with the author of our joint misfortunes.'
'Associate you with him, sir!' she cried.
'Indeed,' said Mr Haredale, 'I think you do. I almost believe that because
your husband was bound by so many ties to our relation, and died in his service
and defence, you have come in some sort to connect us with his murder.'
'Alas!' she answered. 'You little know my heart, sir. You little know the
truth!'
'It is natural you should do so; it is very probable you may, without being
conscious of it,' said Mr Haredale, speaking more to himself than her. 'We are a
fallen house. Money, dispensed with the most lavish hand, would be a poor
recompense for sufferings like yours; and thinly scattered by hands so pinched
and tied as ours, it becomes a miserable mockery. I feel it so, God knows,' he
added, hastily. 'Why should I wonder if she does!'
'You do me wrong, dear sir, indeed,' she rejoined with great earnestness;
'and yet when you come to hear what I desire your leave to say--'
'I shall find my doubts confirmed?' he said, observing that she faltered and
became confused. 'Well!'
He quickened his pace for a few steps, but fell back again to her side, and
said:
'And have you come all this way at last, solely to speak to me?'
She answered, 'Yes.'
'A curse,' he muttered, 'upon the wretched state of us proud beggars, from
whom the poor and rich are equally at a distance; the one being forced to treat
us with a show of cold respect; the other condescending to us in their every
deed and word, and keeping more aloof, the nearer they approach us.--Why, if it
were pain to you (as it must have been) to break for this slight purpose the
chain of habit forged through two-and-twenty years, could you not let me know
your wish, and beg me to come to you?'
'There was not time, sir,' she rejoined. 'I took my resolution but last
night, and taking it, felt that I must not lose a day--a day! an hour--in having
speech with you.'
They had by this time reached the house. Mr Haredale paused for a moment, and
looked at her as if surprised by the energy of her manner. Observing, however,
that she took no heed of him, but glanced up, shuddering, at the old walls with
which such horrors were connected in her mind, he led her by a private stair
into his library, where Emma was seated in a window, reading.
The young lady, seeing who approached, hastily rose and laid aside her book,
and with many kind words, and not without tears, gave her a warm and earnest
welcome. But the widow shrunk from her embrace as though she feared her, and
sunk down trembling on a chair.
'It is the return to this place after so long an absence,' said Emma gently.
'Pray ring, dear uncle--or stay--Barnaby will run himself and ask for wine--'
'Not for the world,' she cried. 'It would have another taste--I could not
touch it. I want but a minute's rest. Nothing but that.'
Miss Haredale stood beside her chair, regarding her with silent pity. She
remained for a little time quite still; then rose and turned to Mr Haredale, who
had sat down in his easy chair, and was contemplating her with fixed attention.
The tale connected with the mansion borne in mind, it seemed, as has been
already said, the chosen theatre for such a deed as it had known. The room in
which this group were now assembled--hard by the very chamber where the act was
done--dull, dark, and sombre; heavy with worm-eaten books; deadened and shut in
by faded hangings, muffling every sound; shadowed mournfully by trees whose
rustling boughs gave ever and anon a spectral knocking at the glass; wore,
beyond all others in the house, a ghostly, gloomy air. Nor were the group
assembled there, unfitting tenants of the spot. The widow, with her marked and
startling face and downcast eyes; Mr Haredale stern and despondent ever; his
niece beside him, like, yet most unlike, the picture of her father, which gazed
reproachfully down upon them from the blackened wall; Barnaby, with his vacant
look and restless eye; were all in keeping with the place, and actors in the
legend. Nay, the very raven, who had hopped upon the table and with the air of
some old necromancer appeared to be profoundly studying a great folio volume
that lay open on a desk, was strictly in unison with the rest, and looked like
the embodied spirit of evil biding his time of mischief.
'I scarcely know,' said the widow, breaking silence, 'how to begin. You will
think my mind disordered.'
'The whole tenor of your quiet and reproachless life since you were last
here,' returned Mr Haredale, mildly, 'shall bear witness for you. Why do you
fear to awaken such a suspicion? You do not speak to strangers. You have not to
claim our interest or consideration for the first time. Be more yourself. Take
heart. Any advice or assistance that I can give you, you know is yours of right,
and freely yours.'
'What if I came, sir,' she rejoined, 'I who have but one other friend on
earth, to reject your aid from this moment, and to say that henceforth I launch
myself upon the world, alone and unassisted, to sink or swim as Heaven may
decree!'
'You would have, if you came to me for such a purpose,' said Mr Haredale
calmly, 'some reason to assign for conduct so extraordinary, which--if one may
entertain the possibility of anything so wild and strange--would have its
weight, of course.'
'That, sir,' she answered, 'is the misery of my distress. I can give no
reason whatever. My own bare word is all that I can offer. It is my duty, my
imperative and bounden duty. If I did not discharge it, I should be a base and
guilty wretch. Having said that, my lips are sealed, and I can say no more.'
As though she felt relieved at having said so much, and had nerved herself to
the remainder of her task, she spoke from this time with a firmer voice and
heightened courage.
'Heaven is my witness, as my own heart is--and yours, dear young lady, will
speak for me, I know--that I have lived, since that time we all have bitter
reason to remember, in unchanging devotion, and gratitude to this family. Heaven
is my witness that go where I may, I shall preserve those feelings unimpaired.
And it is my witness, too, that they alone impel me to the course I must take,
and from which nothing now shall turn me, as I hope for mercy.'
'These are strange riddles,' said Mr Haredale.
'In this world, sir,' she replied, 'they may, perhaps, never be explained. In
another, the Truth will be discovered in its own good time. And may that time,'
she added in a low voice, 'be far distant!'
'Let me be sure,' said Mr Haredale, 'that I understand you, for I am doubtful
of my own senses. Do you mean that you are resolved voluntarily to deprive
yourself of those means of support you have received from us so long--that you
are determined to resign the annuity we settled on you twenty years ago--to
leave house, and home, and goods, and begin life anew--and this, for some secret
reason or monstrous fancy which is incapable of explanation, which only now
exists, and has been dormant all this time? In the name of God, under what
delusion are you labouring?'
'As I am deeply thankful,' she made answer, 'for the kindness of those, alive
and dead, who have owned this house; and as I would not have its roof fall down
and crush me, or its very walls drip blood, my name being spoken in their
hearing; I never will again subsist upon their bounty, or let it help me to
subsistence. You do not know,' she added, suddenly, 'to what uses it may be
applied; into what hands it may pass. I do, and I renounce it.'
'Surely,' said Mr Haredale, 'its uses rest with you.'
'They did. They rest with me no longer. It may be--it IS--devoted to purposes
that mock the dead in their graves. It never can prosper with me. It will bring
some other heavy judgement on the head of my dear son, whose innocence will
suffer for his mother's guilt.'
'What words are these!' cried Mr Haredale, regarding her with wonder. 'Among
what associates have you fallen? Into what guilt have you ever been betrayed?'
'I am guilty, and yet innocent; wrong, yet right; good in intention, though
constrained to shield and aid the bad. Ask me no more questions, sir; but
believe that I am rather to be pitied than condemned. I must leave my house
to-morrow, for while I stay there, it is haunted. My future dwelling, if I am to
live in peace, must be a secret. If my poor boy should ever stray this way, do
not tempt him to disclose it or have him watched when he returns; for if we are
hunted, we must fly again. And now this load is off my mind, I beseech you--and
you, dear Miss Haredale, too--to trust me if you can, and think of me kindly as
you have been used to do. If I die and cannot tell my secret even then (for that
may come to pass), it will sit the lighter on my breast in that hour for this
day's work; and on that day, and every day until it comes, I will pray for and
thank you both, and trouble you no more.
With that, she would have left them, but they detained her, and with many
soothing words and kind entreaties, besought her to consider what she did, and
above all to repose more freely upon them, and say what weighed so sorely on her
mind. Finding her deaf to their persuasions, Mr Haredale suggested, as a last
resource, that she should confide in Emma, of whom, as a young person and one of
her own sex, she might stand in less dread than of himself. From this proposal,
however, she recoiled with the same indescribable repugnance she had manifested
when they met. The utmost that could be wrung from her was, a promise that she
would receive Mr Haredale at her own house next evening, and in the mean time
reconsider her determination and their dissuasions--though any change on her
part, as she told them, was quite hopeless. This condition made at last, they
reluctantly suffered her to depart, since she would neither eat nor drink within
the house; and she, and Barnaby, and Grip, accordingly went out as they had
come, by the private stair and garden-gate; seeing and being seen of no one by
the way.
It was remarkable in the raven that during the whole interview he had kept
his eye on his book with exactly the air of a very sly human rascal, who, under
the mask of pretending to read hard, was listening to everything. He still
appeared to have the conversation very strongly in his mind, for although, when
they were alone again, he issued orders for the instant preparation of
innumerable kettles for purposes of tea, he was thoughtful, and rather seemed to
do so from an abstract sense of duty, than with any regard to making himself
agreeable, or being what is commonly called good company.
They were to return by the coach. As there was an interval of full two hours
before it started, and they needed rest and some refreshment, Barnaby begged
hard for a visit to the Maypole. But his mother, who had no wish to be
recognised by any of those who had known her long ago, and who feared besides
that Mr Haredale might, on second thoughts, despatch some messenger to that
place of entertainment in quest of her, proposed to wait in the churchyard
instead. As it was easy for Barnaby to buy and carry thither such humble viands
as they required, he cheerfully assented, and in the churchyard they sat down to
take their frugal dinner.
Here again, the raven was in a highly reflective state; walking up and down
when he had dined, with an air of elderly complacency which was strongly
suggestive of his having his hands under his coat-tails; and appearing to read
the tombstones with a very critical taste. Sometimes, after a long inspection of
an epitaph, he would strop his beak upon the grave to which it referred, and cry
in his hoarse tones, 'I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil!' but whether he
addressed his observations to any supposed person below, or merely threw them
off as a general remark, is matter of uncertainty.
It was a quiet pretty spot, but a sad one for Barnaby's mother; for Mr Reuben
Haredale lay there, and near the vault in which his ashes rested, was a stone to
the memory of her own husband, with a brief inscription recording how and when
he had lost his life. She sat here, thoughtful and apart, until their time was
out, and the distant horn told that the coach was coming.
Barnaby, who had been sleeping on the grass, sprung up quickly at the sound;
and Grip, who appeared to understand it equally well, walked into his basket
straightway, entreating society in general (as though he intended a kind of
satire upon them in connection with churchyards) never to say die on any terms.
They were soon on the coach-top and rolling along the road.
It went round by the Maypole, and stopped at the door. Joe was from home, and
Hugh came sluggishly out to hand up the parcel that it called for. There was no
fear of old John coming out. They could see him from the coach-roof fast asleep
in his cosy bar. It was a part of John's character. He made a point of going to
sleep at the coach's time. He despised gadding about; he looked upon coaches as
things that ought to be indicted; as disturbers of the peace of mankind; as
restless, bustling, busy, horn-blowing contrivances, quite beneath the dignity
of men, and only suited to giddy girls that did nothing but chatter and go
a-shopping. 'We know nothing about coaches here, sir,' John would say, if any
unlucky stranger made inquiry touching the offensive vehicles; 'we don't book
for 'em; we'd rather not; they're more trouble than they're worth, with their
noise and rattle. If you like to wait for 'em you can; but we don't know
anything about 'em; they may call and they may not--there's a carrier--he was
looked upon as quite good enough for us, when I was a boy.'
She dropped her veil as Hugh climbed up, and while he hung behind, and talked
to Barnaby in whispers. But neither he nor any other person spoke to her, or
noticed her, or had any curiosity about her; and so, an alien, she visited and
left the village where she had been born, and had lived a merry child, a comely
girl, a happy wife--where she had known all her enjoyment of life, and had
entered on its hardest sorrows.
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