CHAPTER LXXV.
IT was a gusty night. The moon had gone down. The tents gleamed indistinct in form, but white as snow. Robinson's tent stood a little apart, among a number of deserted claims, some of them dry, but most of them with three or four feet of water in them.
There was, however, one large tent about twenty yards from Robinson's.
A man crept on his stomach up to this tent and listened. He then joined another man who stood at some distance, and whose form seemed gigantic in the dim starlight. “All right,” said the spy, “they are all fast as dormice, snoring like hogs; no fear from them.”
“Go to work, then,” whispered brutus. “Do your part.”
mephistopheles laid a deep iron dish upon the ground, and removed the bung from the turpentine cask, and poured. “Confound the wind, how it wastes the stuff,” cried he.
He now walked on tiptoe past Robinson's tent and scattered the turpentine with a bold sweep, so that it fell light as rain over a considerable surface. A moment of anxiety succeeded; would their keen antagonists hear even that slight noise? No! no one stirred in the tent.
mephistopheles returned to the cask, and, emboldened by success, brought it nearer the doomed tent. Six times he walked past the windward side of the tent, and scattered the turpentine over it. It was at the other side his difficulties began.
The first time he launched the liquid, the wind took it and returned it nearly all in his face, and over his clothes. Scarce a drop reached the tent.
The next time he went up closer with a beating heart, and flung it sharper. This time full two-thirds went upon the tent, and only a small quantity came back like spray.
By the time the cask was emptied, the tent was saturated. Then this wretch passed the tent yet once more, and scattered a small quantity of oil to make the flame more durable and deadly.
“Now it is my turn,” whispered brutus. “I thought it would never come.”
What is that figure crouching and crawling about a hundred yards to windward? It is the caitiff, Crawley, who, after peremptorily declining to have anything to do with this hellish act, has crept furtively after them, partly to play the spy on them, for he suspects they will lie to him about the gold, partly urged by curiosity. He could see nothing at that distance but the dark body of mephistopheles passing at intervals between him and the white tent.
He shivered with cold and terror at the crime about to be done, and quivered with impatience that it was so long a-doing.
The assassins now divided their force. mephistopheles took his station to leeward of the tent; brutus to windward.
Crawley saw a sudden spark upon the ground; it was brutus striking a lucifer match against his heel. With this he lighted a piece of tow, and running along the tent he left a line of fire behind him, and awaited the result, his cutlass griped in his hand and his teeth clinched.
Crawley saw that line of fire come and then creep and then rise and then roar, and shoot up into a great column of fire thirty feet high, roaring and blazing, and turning night into day all round. Simultaneously with this tremendous burst of fire and light, which startled Crawley by bringing him in a moment into broad daylight, he saw rise from the earth a black figure with a fiendish face.
At this awful sight the conscience-stricken wretch fell flat and tried to work into the soil like a worm. Nor did he recover any portion of his presence of mind till he heard a shrill whoop, savage and soul-chilling, but mortal, and, looking up, saw Kalingalunga go bounding down upon brutus with gigantic leaps, his tomahawk whirling.
Crawley cowered like a hare and watched. brutus, surprised but not dismayed, wheeled round and faced the savage, cutlass in hand. He parried a fierce blow of the tomahawk, and with his left fist struck Kalingalunga on the temple, and knocked him backward half a dozen yards. The elastic savage recovered himself and danced like a fiend round brutus in the red light of the blazing tent.
Warned by that strange blow, straight from the armpit, a blow entirely new to him, he came on with more deadly caution, eyes and teeth budelights, and brutus felt a chill for a moment, but it speedily turned to rage. Now as the combatants each prepared to strike again, screams suddenly issued from the other side the tent, so wild, despairing, and unnatural as to suspend their arms for a moment. They heard but saw nothing, only the savage heart of brutus found time to exult—his enemies were perishing. But Crawley saw as well as heard. A pillar of flame eight feet high burst out from behind the tent and ran along the ground. From that conical flame issued those appalling shrieks—it was a man on fire. The living flame ran but a few steps, then disappeared from the earth, and the screams ceased. Apparently the fire had not only killed, but annihilated its prey and so itself. Crawley sickened with horror, and for a moment with remorse.
But already brutus and Kalingalunga were fighting again by the light of the burning tent. They closed, and this time blood flowed on both sides. The savage, by a skillful feint, cut brutus on the flesh of the left shoulder, but not deep, and brutus once more surprised the savage by delivering point with his cutlass, and inflicted a severe graze on the ribs.
At the sight of his enemy's blood, brutus followed up and aimed a fierce blow at Kalingalunga's head; he could not have made a more useless attack. The savage bore on his left arm a shield, so called; it was but three inches broad and two feet long, but skill and practice had made it an impenetrable defense. He received the cutlass on this shield as a matter of course, and simultaneously delivered his tomahawk on brutus's unguarded head. brutus went down under the blow and rolled over on his face.
The crouching spectator of this terrible combat by the decaying light of the tent heard the hard blow and saw the white man roll upon the ground. Then he saw the tomahawk twice lifted and twice descend upon the man's back as he lay. The next moment the savage came running from the tent at his utmost speed.
Crawley's first thought was that assistance had come to brutus; his next was a terrible one. The savage had first risen from the earth at a spot between the tent and him. Perhaps he had been watching both him and the tent. A moment of horrible uncertainty, and then Crawley yielded to his instinct and ran. A terrible whoop behind told him he was indeed to be the next victim. He ran for the dear life; no one would have believed he could shamble along at the rate he did. His tent was half a mile off; he would be a dead man long ere he could reach it. He turned his yelling head as he ran, to see. The fleet savage had already diminished the distance between them by half. Crawley now filled the air with despairing cries for help. A large tent was before him; he knew not whose, but certain death was behind him. He made for the tent. If he could but reach it before the death-stroke was given him! Yes, it is near! No, it is white and looks closer than it is. A whoop sounded in his ears; it seemed to ring inside his head it was so near. He flung himself yelling with terror at the wall of the tent. An aperture gave way. A sharp cut as with a whip seemed to sting him, and he was on his knees in the middle of the tent howling for mercy, first to the savage, who he made sure was standing over him with his tomahawk; then to a man who got him by the throat and pressed a pistol barrel cold as an icicle to his cheek.
“Mercy! mercy! the savage! he is killing me! murder! murder! help!”
“Who are you?” roared the man, shaking him.
“Oh, stop him! he will kill me! Shoot him! Don't shoot me! I am a respectable man. It is the savage! kill him! He is at the door—please kill him! I'll give you a hundred pounds!”
“What is to do? The critter is mad!”
“There! there! you will see a savage! Shoot him! kill him! For pity's sake kill him, and I'll tell you all! I am respectable. I'll give you a hundred pounds to kill him!”
“Why, it is Smith, that gives us all a treat at times.”
“Don't I! Oh, my dear, good friend, he has killed me! He came after me with his tomahawk. Have pity on a respectable man—and kill him!”
The man went to the door of the tent and sure enough there was Jacky, who had retired to some distance. The man fired at him with as little ceremony as he would at a glass bottle, and, as was to be expected, missed him; but Jacky, who had a wholesome horror of the make-thunders, ran off directly, and went to hack the last vestiges of life out of brutus.
Crawley remained on his knees, howling and whimpering so piteously that the man took pity on this abject personage.
“Have a drop, Mr. Smith; you have often given me one—there. I'll strike a light.”
The man struck a light and fixed a candle in a socket. He fumbled in a corner for the bottle, and was about to offer it to Crawley, when he was arrested by a look of silent horror on his visitor's face.
“Why, what is wrong now?”
“Look! look! look!” cried Crawley, trembling from head to foot. “Here it comes! there is its tail! Soon its eyes and teeth will catch light! It knows the work we have been at. Ah! ah! ah!”
The man looked round very uneasily. Crawley's way of pointing and glaring over one's head at some object behind one was anything but encouraging.
“What? where?”
“There! there! coming through the side of the tent. It can come through a wall!” and Crawley shook from head to foot.
“Why, that is your own shadow,” said the man. “Why, what a faint-hearted one to shake at your own shadow.”
“My shadow!” cried Crawley; “Heaven forbid! Have I got a tail?” screeched Crawley, reproachfully.
“That you have,” said the man, “now I look at you full.”
Crawley clapped his hand behind him, and to his horror he had a tail
CHAPTER LXXVI.
CRAWLEY, who, what with the habit of cerebral hallucination due to brandy and the present flutter of his spirits and his conscience, had for a moment or two lost all the landmarks of probability, no sooner felt his hand encounter a tail—slight in size, but stiff as a pug's, and straight as a pointer's—than he uttered a dismal howl, and it is said that for a single moment he really suspected premature caudation had been inflicted on him for his crimes. But such delusions are short-lived. He slewed himself round after this tail in his efforts to see it, and squinting over his shoulder he did see it; and a warm liquid which he now felt stealing down his legs and turning cold as it went, opened his eyes still farther. It was a red spear sticking in his person—sticking tight. Jacky, who had never got so near him as he fancied, saw him about to get into a tent, and, unable to tomahawk him, did the best he could—flung a light javelin with such force and address that it pierced his coat and trousers and buried half its head in his flesh.
This spear-head, made of jagged fishbones, had to be cut out by the simple and agreeable process of making all round it a hole larger than itself. The operation served to occupy Crawley for the remaining part of the night, and exercised his vocal powers. This was the first time he had smarted in his penetrable part—the skin—and it made him very spiteful. Away went his compunction, and at peep of day he shambled out very stiff, no longer dreading, but longing to hear which of his enemies it was he had seen wrapped in flame, shrieking, and annihilated like the snuff of a candle. He came to the scene of action just as the sun rose.
But others were there before him. A knot of men stood round a black patch of scorched soil, round which were scattered little fragments of canvas burned to tinder, talking over a most mysterious affair of the night past.
It came out that the patrol, some of whom were present, had been ordered by Captain Robinson not to go their rounds as usual, but to watch in a tent near his own, since he expected an attack. Accustomed to keep awake on the move, but not in a recumbent posture, they had slept the sleep of infancy, till suddenly awakened by the sound of a pistol. Then they had run out, and had found the captain's tent in ashes, and a man lying near it sore hacked and insensible, but still breathing. They had taken him to their tent, but he had never spoken, and the affair was incomprehensible. While each was giving some wild opinion or another, a faint voice issued from the bowels of the earth, invoking aid.
Several ran to the spot, and at the bottom of an old claim full thirty feet deep they discovered on looking intently down the face of a man rising out of the clayey water. They lowered ropes and hauled him up.
“How did you come there, mate?”
“He had come into the camp in the dark, and, not knowing the ground, and having (to tell the truth) had a drop, he had fallen into the claim.”
He was asked with an air of suspicion how long ago this had happened.
“More than an hour,” replied the wily one.
Crawley looked at him, and being, unlike the others, acquainted with the man's features, saw, spite of the clay-cake he was enveloped in, that his whiskers were frizzled to nothing and his fiendish eyebrows gone. Then a sickening suspicion crept over him; he communicated it by a look to mephistopheles.
Acting on it he asked, with an artful appearance of friendly interest:
“But the men? the poor men that were in the tent?”
“What! the captain and his mate?”
“Yes!”
“Why, ye fool! they are half way to Sydney by now.”
“Half way to Sydney?” and a ghastly look passed between the speaker and mephistopheles.
“Ay, lad! they rode off on Moore's two best nags at midnight.”
“The captain had a belt round his waist crammed with dust and bank-notes,” cried another, “and the farmer a nugget as big as a pumpkin on the pommel of his saddle.”
Four hours had not elapsed ere Crawley and mephistopheles were on the road to Sydney, but not on horseback. Crawley had no longer funds to buy two horses, and, even if he had, he could not have borne the saddle after the barbarous surgery of last night—-the lance-head was cut out with a cheese-knife. But he and mephistopheles joined a company of successful diggers going down with their swag. On the road they constantly passed smaller parties of unfortunate diggers, who had left the mine in despair when the weather broke and the claims filled with water; and the farther they went the more wretched was the condition of those they overtook. Ragged, shoeless, hungry, foot-sore, heart-sore, poor, broken pilgrims from the shrine of Mammon.
Now it befell that, forty miles on this side Sydney, they fell in with seven such ragged specters; and, while they were giving these a little food, up came from the city a large, joyful party—the eagerness of hope and cupidity on their faces.
“Hallo! are they mad, going up to the diggings in the wet weather!”
They were questioned.
A hundred-weight of gold had been found at the diggings, and all the town was turning out to find some more such prizes; and, in fact, every mile after this they met a party, great or small, ardent, sanguine, on an almost hopeless errand.
Such is the strange and fatal no-logic of speculation. For us the rare is to turn common, and, when we have got it, be rare as ever.
mephistopheles and Crawley parted at the suburb; the former was to go to certain haunts and form a gang to seize the rich prize. Meantime Crawley would enter the town and discover where the men were lodging. If in an inn, one of the gang must go there as a well-dressed traveler, and watch his opportunity. If in a lodging, other means.
Crawley found the whole city ringing with the great nugget. Crawley put eager questions, and received ready answers. He was shown the bank up to which the men had ridden in broad daylight; the one on the big horse had the nugget on his saddle; they had taken it, and broken it, and weighed it, and sold it in the bank parlor for three thousand eight hundred pounds. Crawley did not like this, he had rather they had not converted it into paper. His next question was, whether it was known where the men lodged.
“Known! I believe you; why, they are more thought of than the governor. Everybody runs to get a word with them, gentle or simple. You will find them at the 'Ship' inn.”
To the “Ship” went Crawley. He dared not be too direct in his queries, so he put them in form of a statement.
“You have got some lucky ones here, that found the great nugget?”
“Well, we had! But they are gone—been gone this two hours. Do you know them?”
“Yes,” said Crawley, without fear, as they were gone. “Where are they gone, do you know?”
“Why, home, I suppose; you chaps make your money out of us, but you all run home to spend it.”
“What, gone to England!” gasped Crawley.
“Ay, look! there is the ship just being towed out of the harbor.”
Crawley shambled, and tore, and ran, and was just in time to see the two friends standing with beaming faces on the vessel's deck as she glided out on her voyage home.
He sat down half stupid; mephistopheles went on collecting his gang in the suburbs.
The steamer cast off and came wheeling back; the ship spread her huge white plumage, and went proudly off to sea, the blue waves breaking white under her bows.
Crawley sat glaring at all this in a state of mental collapse.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
THUS have I told in long and tedious strains how George Fielding went to Australia to make a thousand pounds, and how by industry, sobriety, and cattle, he did not make a thousand pounds, and how, aided with the help of a converted thief, this honest fellow did by gold digging, industry and sobriety, make several thousand pounds, and take them safe away home, spite of many wicked devices and wicked men.
Thus have I told how Mr. Meadows flung out his left hand into Australia to keep George from coming back to Susan with a thousand pounds, and how, spite of one stroke of success, his left hand eventually failed, and failed completely.
But his right?
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
Joyous as the first burst of summer were the months Susan passed after the receipt of George's happy letter. Many warm feelings combined in one stream of happiness in Susan's heart. Perhaps the keenest of all was pride at George's success. Nobody could laugh at George now, and insult her again there where she was most sensitive, by telling her that George was not good enough for her or any woman; and even those who set such store upon money-making would have to confess that George could do even that for love of her, as well as they could do it for love of themselves. Next to this her joy was greatest at the prospect of his speedy return.
And now she became joyfully impatient for further news, but not disappointed at his silence till two months had passed without another letter. Then, indeed, anxiety mingled now and then with her happiness. Then it was that Meadows, slowly and hesitatingly to the last, raised his hand and struck the first direct blow at her heart. He struck in the dark. He winced for her both before and after. Yet he struck.
One market-day a whisper passed through Farnborough that George Fielding had met with wonderful luck. That he had made his fortune by gold, and was going to marry a young lady out in Australia. Farmer Merton brought the whisper home. Meadows was sure he would.
Meadows did not come to the house for some days. He half feared to look upon his work; to see Susan's face agonized under his blow. At last he came. He watched her by stealth. He found he might have spared his qualms. She chatted as usual in very good spirits, and just before he went she told him the report with a smile of ineffable scorn.
She was simple, unsuspicious, and every way without a shield against a Meadows, but the loyal heart by its own virtue had turned the dagger's edge.
A week after this Jefferies brought Meadows a letter; it was from Susan to George. Meadows read it writhing. It breathed kind affection, with one or two demi-maternal cautions about his health, and to be very prudent for her sake. Not a word of doubt; there was, however, a postscript of which the following is the exact wording:
“P. S. It is all over Farnborough that you are going to be married to some one in Australia.”
Two months more passed, and no letter from George. These two months told upon Susan; she fretted and became restless and irritable, and cold misgivings crept over her, and the anguish of suspense!
At last one day she unbosomed herself, though with hesitation, to a warm and disinterested friend; blushing all over with tearful eyes she confessed her grief to Mr. Meadows. “Don't tell father, sir; I hide my trouble from him as well as I can, but what does it mean George not writing to me these four months and three days? Do pray tell me what does it mean!” and Susan cried so piteously that Meadows winced at his success.
“Oh, Mr. Meadows! don't flatter me; tell me the truth.” While he was exulting in her firmness, who demanded the truth, bitter or not, she continued: “Only don't tell me that I am forgotten!” And she looked so piteously in the oracle's face that he forgot everything in the desire to say something she would like him the better for saying; he muttered, “Perhaps he has sailed for home.” He expected her to say, “And if he has he would have written to me before sailing.” But instead of this Susan gave a little cry of joy.
“Ah! how foolish I have been. Mr. Meadows, you are a friend out of a thousand; you are as wise as I am foolish. Poor George! you will never let him know I was so wicked as to doubt him.” And Susan brightened with joy and hope. The heart believes so readily the thing it longs should be true. She was happy all the rest of the evening.
Meadows went away mad with her for her folly, and with himself for his feebleness of purpose, and next market-day again the whisper went round the market that George Fielding was going to marry out there. This time a detail was sketched in: “It was a lady in the town of Bathurst.” Old Merton brought this home and twitted his daughter. She answered haughtily that it was a falsehood. She would stake her life on George's fidelity.
“See, Mr. Meadows, they are all against poor George, all except you. But what does it mean? if he does not write or come soon I think I shall go mad.”
“Report is a common liar; I would not believe anything till I saw it in black and white,” said Meadows, doggedly.
“No more I will.”
Soon after this William Fielding had a talk with Susan.
“Have you heard a report about George?”
“Yes! I have heard a rumor.”
“You don't believe it, I hope.”
“Why should I believe it?”
“I'm going to trace it up to the liar that forged it, if I can.”
Susan suppressed her satisfaction at this resolution of Will Fielding's.
“Is it worth while?” asked she coldly.
“If I didn't think so, I shouldn't take that much trouble, not expecting any thanks.”
“Have I said anything to offend you?” asked Susan, with a still more frigid tone.
The other did not trust himself to answer. But two days after he came again, and told her he had written a letter to George, telling him what reports were about, and begging for an answer whether or not there was any truth in them.
A gleam of satisfaction from Susan's eyes, but not a word. This man, who had once been George's rival at heart, was the last to whom she would openly acknowledge her doubts. Then Will went on to tell her that he had traced the rumor from one to another up to a stranger whose name nobody knew; “but I dare say Mr. Meadows has a notion.”
“No!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! he would have told me if he had.”
William gave a snort of incredulity, and hinted that probably Mr. Meadows himself was at the bottom of the scandal.
Now Meadows' artful conduct had fortified Susan against such a suspicion, and, being by nature a warm-hearted friend, she fired up for him, as she would have for Mr. Eden, or even for poor Will in his absence. She did it, too, in the most womanish way. She did not tell the young man that she had consulted Mr. Meadows, and that he had constantly discredited the report, and set her against believing it. Had she done this, she would have staggered the simple-minded Will; but no; she said to herself, “He has attacked a good friend of mine, I won't satisfy him so far as to give him reasons;” so she merely snubbed him.
“Oh, I know you are set against poor Mr. Meadows; he is a good friend of ours, of my father, and me, and of George, too.”
“I wish you may not have to alter your mind,” sneered Will.
“I will not without a reason.”
“I will give you a reason; do you remember that day—”
“When you insulted him in his own house, and me into the bargain, Will?”
“Not you, Susan, leastways I hope not, but him I did, and am just as like to do it again; well, when you were gone, I took a thought, and I said, appearances deceive the wisest; I may be mistaken—”
“He! he!”
“I don't know what you are laughing at; and then, says I, it is his own house, after all, so I said, 'If I am wrong, and you don't mean to undermine my brother, take my hand;' and I gave it him.”
“And he refused it?”
“No, Susan!”
“Well, then—”
“But, Susan,” said William, solemnly, “his hand lay in mine like a stone.”
“Really, now!”
“A lump of ice would be as near the mark.”
“Well! is that the reason you promised me?” William nodded.
“William, you are a fool.”
“Oh I am a fool now?”
“You go and insult a man, your superior in every respect, and the very next moment he is to give you his hand as warmly as to a friend, and an equal; you really are too foolish to go without a keeper, and if it was in any man's power to set me against poor George altogether you have gone the way to do it this twelve months past;” and Susan closed the conference abruptly.
It was William's fate to rivet Meadows' influence by every blow he aimed at it. For all that the prudent Meadows thought it worth his while to rid himself of this honest and determined foe, and he had already taken steps. He had discovered that this last month William Fielding, returning from market, had been seen more than once to stop and chat at one Mrs. Holiday's, a retired small tradeswoman in Farnborough. Now Mrs. Holiday was an old acquaintance of Meadows' and had given him sugar-plums thirty years ago. It suited his purpose to remember all of a sudden these old sugar-plums, and that Mrs. Holiday had lately told him she wanted to get out of the town and end her days upon turf.
There was a cottage, paddock and garden for sale within a hundred yards of “The Grove.” Meadows bought them a good bargain, and offered them to the widow at a very moderate rent.
The widow was charmed. “Why, we can keep a cow, Mr. Meadows.”
“Well, there is grass enough.”
The widow took the cottage with enthusiasm.
Mrs. Holiday had a daughter, a handsome—a downright handsome girl, and a good girl into the bargain.
Meadows had said to himself: “It is not the old woman Will Fielding goes there for. Well, she will want some one to teach her how to farm that half acre of grass, and buy the cow and milk her. Friendly offices—chat coming and going—come in, Mr. Fielding, and taste your cow's cream!—and, when he has got a lass of his own, his eye won't be forever on mine.”
William's letter to George went to the post-office, and from the post-office to a little pile of intercepted letters in Meadows' desk.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
NEARLY eight months had now elapsed without a letter from George. Susan could no longer deceive herself with hopes. George was either false to her or dead. She said as much to her false friend. This inspired him with an artifice as subtle as unscrupulous. A letter had been brought to him by Jefferies, which he at once recognized as the planned letter from Crawley to another tool of his in Farnborough. This very day he set about a report that George was dead. It did not reach Susan so soon as he thought it would, for old Merton hesitated to tell her; but on the Sunday evening, with considerable reluctance and misgivings, he tried in a very clumsy way to prepare her for sad news.
But her mind had long been prepared for bitter tidings. Fancy eight weary months spent in passing every possible calamity before her imagination, death as often as any.
She fixed her eyes on the old man. “Father, George is dead!”
Old Merton hung his head, and made no reply.
That was enough. Susan crept from the room pale as ashes. She tottered, but she did not fall. She reached her room and locked herself in.
CHAPTER LXXX.
MR. MEADOWS did not visit Grassmere for some days; the cruel one distrusted his own firmness. When he did come he came with a distinct purpose. He found Merton alone.
“Susan sees no one. You have heard?”
“What?”
“Her sweetheart. He is dead.”
“Why, how can that be? And who says so?”
“That is the news.”
“Well, it is a falsehood!” said Mr. Meadows, coolly.
“I wish to Heaven it might,” whispered old Merton, “for she won't live long after him.”
Mr. Meadows then told Merton that he had spoken with a man who had got news of George Fielding not four months old, and he was in very good health.
“Will you tell Susan this?”
“Certainly.”
Susan was called down. Meadows started at the sight of her. She was pale and hollow-eyed, and in these few days seemed ten years older. She was dressed all in black. “I am a murderer!” thought he. And remorse without one grain of honest repentance pierced his heart.
“Speak out, John,” said the father, “the girl is not a fool. She has borne ill news, she can bear good. Can't you, Susan?”
“Yes, dear father, if it is God's will any good news should come to me.” And she never took her eyes off Mr. Meadows, but belied her assumed firmness by quivering like an aspen leaf.
“Do you know Mr. Griffin?” asked Meadows.
“Yes!” replied Susan, still trembling gently, but all over.
“He has got a letter from Sydney from a little roguish attorney called Crawley. I heard him say with my own ears that Crawley tells him he had just seen George Fielding in the streets of Sydney, well and hearty.”
“You are deceiving me out of kindness.” (Her eyes fixed on his.)
“I am not. I wish I may die if the man is not as well as I am!”
Her eyes were never off his face, and at this moment she read for certain that it was true.
She uttered a cry of joy so keen it was painful to hear, and then she laughed and cried and sank into a chair laughing and crying in strong hysterics, that lasted till the poor girl almost fainted from exhaustion. Her joy was more violent and even terrible than her grief had been.
The female servants were called to assist her, and old Merton and Meadows left her in their hands, feeble, but calm and thankful. She even smiled her adieu to Meadows.
The next day Meadows called upon Griffin. “Let me look at that letter?” said he. “I want to copy a part of it.”
“There has been one here before you,” said Griffin.
“Who?”
“She did not give her name, but I think it must have been Miss Merton. She begged me hard to let her see the letter. I told her she might take it home with her. Poor thing! she gave me a look as if she could have eaten me.”
“What else?” asked Meadows anxiously—his success had run ahead of his plot.
“She put it in her bosom.”
“In her bosom?”
“Ay! and pressed her little white hands upon it as if she had got a treasure. I doubt it will be more like the asp in the Bible story, eh! sir?”
“There! I don't want your reflections,” said Meadows, fiercely, but his voice quavered. The myrmidon was silenced.
Susan made her escape into a field called the Kynecroft, belonging to the citizens, and there she read the letter. It was a long, tiresome one, all about matters of business which she did not understand; it was only at the last page that she caught sight of the name she longed to see. She hurried down to it, and when she got to it with beating heart it was the fate of this innocent, loving woman to read these words:
“What luck some have. There is George Fielding, of the 'Grove Farm,' has made his fortune at the gold, and married yesterday to one of the prettiest girls in Sydney. I met them walking in the street to-day. She would not have looked at him but for the gold.”
Susan uttered a faint moan, and sank down slowly on her knees, like some tender tree felled by a rude stroke; her eyes seemed to swim in a mist, she tried to read the cruel words again but could not; she put her hands before her eyes.
“He is alive,” she said, “thank God, he is alive.” And at last tears forced their way through her fingers. She took her handkerchief and dried her eyes. “Why do I cry for another woman's husband?” and the hot color of shame and of wounded pride burst even through her tears.
“I will not cry,” said she, proudly, “he is alive—I will not cry—he has forgotten me; from this moment I will never shed another tear for one that is alive and unworthy of a tear. I will go home.”
She went home, crying all the way. And now a partial success attended the deep Meadows' policy. It was no common stroke of unscrupulous cunning to plunge her into the very depths of woe in order to take her out of them. The effects were manifold, and all tended his way.
First she was less sorrowful than she had been before that deadly blow, for now the heart had realized a greater woe, and had the miserable comfort of the comparison; but, above all, new and strong passions had risen and battled fiercely with grief—anger and wounded pride.
Susan had self-respect and pride, too, perhaps a shade too much though less small vanity than have most persons of her moderate caliber.
What! had she wept and sighed all these months for a man who did not care for her?
What! had she defied sneers, and despised affectionate hints, and gloried openly in her love, to be openly insulted and betrayed!
What! had she shut herself from the world, and put on mourning and been seen in mourning for one who was not dead, but well and happy and married to another!
An agony of shame rushed over the wronged, insulted, humiliated beauty. She longed to fly from the world. She asked her father to leave Grassmere and go to some other farm a hundred miles away. She asked him suddenly, nervously, and so impetuously that the old man looked up in dismay.
“What! leave the farm where your mother lived with me, and where you were born. I should feel strange, girl; but”—and he gave a strange sigh—“mayhap I shall have to leave it whether I will or no.”
Susan misunderstood him and colored with self-reproach. She said hastily: “No! no! Father, you shan't leave it for me. Forgive me, I am a wayward girl!”
And the strung nerves gave way, and tears gushed over the hot cheeks, as she clung to her father, and tried to turn the current of her despised love and bestow it all on that selfish old noodle. A great treasure went a-begging in Grassmere farmhouse.
Mr. Meadows called, but much to his chagrin Susan was never visible. “Would he excuse her? she was indisposed.”
The next evening he came he found her entertaining four or five other farmers' daughters and a couple of young men. She was playing the piano to them and talking and laughing louder and faster than ever he had heard her in his life. He sat moody a little while and watched her uneasily, but soon took his line, and exerting his excellent social powers became the life of the party. But as he warmed Susan froze, as much as to say, “Somebody must play the fool to amuse these triflers—if you undertake it I need not.” For all that the very attempt at society indicated what was passing in Susan's mind, and the deep Meadows invited all present to meet at his house in two days' time.
Meadows was now living in Isaac Levi's old house. He had examined it, found it a much nicer house for him than his new one—it was like himself, full of ins and outs, and it was more in the heart of business and yet quiet; for, though it stood in a row, yet it was as good as detached, because the houses on each side were unoccupied. They belonged to Jews, probably dependents on Isaac, for they had left the town about a twelvemonth after his departure and had never returned, though a large quantity of goods had been deposited in one of the houses.
Meadows contrived that this little party should lead to another. His game was to draw Susan into the world, and moreover have her seen in his company. She made no resistance, for her wounded pride said, “Don't let people know you are breaking your heart for one who does not care for you.” She used to come to these parties radiant and playing her part with consummate resolution and success, and go home and spend the night in tears.
Meadows did not see the tears that followed these unusual efforts—perhaps he suspected them. Enough for him that Susan's pride and shame and indignation were set against her love, and, above all, against her grief, and that she was forming habits whose tendency at least was favorable to his views.
Another four months, and Susan, exhausted by conflicting passions, had settled down into a pensive languor, broken by gusts of bitter grief, which became rarer and rarer. Her health recovered itself, all but its elasticity. Her pride would not let her pine away. But her heart scarcely beat at all, and perhaps it was a good thing for her that a trouble of another kind came to gently stir it. Her father, who had for some months been moody and depressed, confessed to her that he had been speculating and was on the verge of ruin. This dreadful disclosure gave little more pain to Susan than if he had told her his head ached; but she put down her work and came and kissed him, and tried to console him.
“I must work harder, that is all, father. I am often asked to give a lesson on the piano-forte; I will do that for your sake, and don't you fret for me. What with the trifle my mother settled on me and my industry, I am above poverty, and you shall never see me repine.”
In short, poor Susan took her father for a woman—adopted a line of consolation addressed to his affection, instead of his selfishness. It was not for her he was afflicted, it was for himself.
It was at this conjuncture that Meadows spoke out. There was no longer anything to be gained by delay. In fact, he could not but observe that since the fatal letter he appeared to be rather losing ground in his old character. There was nothing left him but to attack her in a new one. He removed the barrier from his patient impatience.
He found her alone one evening. He begged her to walk in the garden. She complied with an unsuspecting smile. Then he told her all he had suffered for her sake; how he had loved her this three years with all his soul—how he never thought to tell her this—how hard he had struggled against it—how he had run away from it, and after that how he had subdued it, or thought he had subdued it, to esteem—and how he had been rewarded by seeing that his visits and his talk had done her some good. “But now,” said he, “that you are free, I have no longer the force to hide my love; now that the man I dared not interfere with has thrown away the jewel, it is not in nature that I should not beg to be allowed to take it up and wear it in my heart.”
Susan listened; first with surprise, then with confusion and pain, then with terror at the violence of the man's passion; for, the long restraint removed, it overwhelmed him like a flood. Her bosom heaved with modest agitation, and soon the tears streamed down her cheeks at his picture of what he had gone through for her sake. She made shift to gasp out, “My poor friend!” But she ended almost fiercely: “Let no man ever hope for affection from me, for my heart is in the grave. Oh, that I was there, too!” And she ran sobbing away from him in spite of his entreaties.
Another man and not George had made a confession of love to her. His voice had trembled, his heart quivered, with love for her, and it was not George. So then another link was snapped. Others saw they had a right to love her now, and acted on it.
Meadows was at a loss, but he stayed away a week in silence, and thought and thought, and then he wrote a line begging permission to visit her as usual. “I have been so long used to hide my feelings, because they were unlawful, that I can surely hide them if I see they make you more unhappy than you would be without.”
Susan replied that her advice to him was to avoid her as he would a pestilence. He came as usual, and told her he would take her commands, but could not take her advice. He would run all risks to his own heart. He was cheerful, chatty and never said a word of love; and this relieved Susan, so that the evening passed pleasantly. Susan, listless and indifferent to present events, and never accustomed, like Meadows, to act upon a preconceived plan, did not even observe what Meadows had gained by this sacrifice of his topic for a single night, viz., that after declaring himself her lover he was still admitted to the house. The next visit he was not quite so forbearing, yet still forbearing; and so on by sly gradations. It was every way an unequal contest. A great man against an average woman—a man of forty against a woman of twenty-two—a man all love and selfishness against a woman all affection and unselfishness. But I think his chief ally was a firm belief on Susan's part that he was the best of men; that from first to last of this affair his conduct had been perfection; that while George was true all his thought had been to console her grief at his absence; that he never would have spoken but for the unexpected treason of George, and then seeing her insulted and despised he had taken that moment to show her she was loved and honored. Oh, what an ungrateful girl she was that she could not love such a man!
Then her father was on the same side. “John Meadows seems down like, Susan. Do try and cheer him up a bit, I am sure he has often cheered thee.”
“That he has, father.”
Susan pitied Meadows. Pitying him, she forced herself at times to be gracious, and when she did he was so happy that she was alarmed at her power and drew in.
Old Merton saw now how the land lay, and he clung to a marriage between these two as his only hope. “John Meadows will pull me through, if he marries my Susan.”
And so the two selfish ones had got the unselfish one between them, one pulling gently, the other pushing quietly, but both without intermission. Thus days and days rolled on.
Meadows now came four times a week instead of two, and courted her openly, and beamed so with happiness that she had not always the heart to rob him of this satisfaction, and he overwhelmed her with kindness and attention of every sort, and, if any one else was present, she was sure to see how much he was respected; and this man whom others courted was her slave. This soothed the pride another had wounded.
One day he poured out his love to her with such passion that he terrified her, and the next time he came she avoided him.
Her father remonstrated. “Girl, you will break that man's heart if you are so unkind to him; he could not say a word because you shunned him like. Why, your heart must be made of stone.” A burst of tears was all the reply.
At last two things presented themselves to this poor girl's understanding; that for her there was no chance of earthly happiness, do what she would, and that, strangely enough, she the wretched one had it in her power to make two other beings happy, her father and good Mr. Meadows.
Now, a true woman lives to make others happy. She rarely takes the self-contained views of life men are apt to do.
It passed through Susan's mind: “If I refuse to make these happy, why do I live, what am I on the earth for at all?”
It seemed cruel to her to refuse happiness when she could bestow it without making herself two shades more miserable than she was.
Despair and unselfishness are evil counselors in a scheming, selfish world. The life-blood had been drained out of her heart by so many cruel blows, by the long waiting, the misgivings, the deep woe when she believed George dead, the bitter grief and mortification and sense of wrong when she found he was married to another.
Many of us, male and female, treated as Susan imagined herself treated, have taken another lover out of pique. Susan did not so. She was bitterly piqued, but she did not make that use of her pique.
Despair of happiness, pity, and pure unselfishness, these stood John Meadows' friends with this unhappy dupe, and perhaps my male readers will be incredulous as well as shocked when I relate the manner in which at last this young creature, lovely as an angel, in the spring of life, loving another still, and deluding herself to think she hated and despised him, was one afternoon surprised into giving her hand to a man for whom she did not really care a button.
It was as if she had said: “Is it really true your happiness depends on me? then take me—quick—before my courage fails—are you happy now, my poor soul?” On the other side there were the passionate pleadings of a lover; the deep, manly voice broken with supplication, the male eyes glistening, the diabolical mixture of fraud and cunning with sincerity.
At the first symptom of yielding the man seized her as the hawk the dove. He did not wait for a second hint. He poured out gratitude and protestations. He thanked her, and blessed her, and in his manly ardor caught her to his bosom.
She shut her eyes, and submitted to the caress as to an executioner.
“Pray let me go to my father,” she whispered.
She came to her father and told him what she had done, and kissed him, and when he kissed her in return, that rare embrace seemed to her her reward.
Meadows went home on wings—he was in a whirlwind of joy and triumph.
“Aha! what will not a strong will do?” He had no fears, no misgivings. He saw she did not really like him even, but he would make her love him! Let him once get her into his house and into his arms, by degrees she should love him; ay, she should adore him! He held that a young and virtuous woman cannot resist the husband who remains a lover, unless he is a fool as well as a lover. She could resist a man, but hardly the hearth, the marriage-bed, the sacred domestic ties, and a man whose love should be always present, always ardent, yet his temper always cool, and his determination to be loved unflinching.
With this conviction, Meadows had committed crimes of the deepest dye to possess Susan. Villain as he was, it may be doubted whether he would have committed these felonies had he doubted for an instant her ultimate happiness. The unconquerable dog said to himself: “The day will come that I will tell her how I have risked my soul for her; how I have played the villain for her; and she shall throw her arms round my neck, and bless me for committing all those crimes to make her so happy against her will.”
It remained to clinch the nail.
He came to Grassmere every day; and one night that the old man was telling Susan and him how badly things were going with him, he said, with a cheerful laugh: “I wonder at you, father-in-law, taking on that way. Do you think Susan will let you be uncomfortable for want of a thousand pounds or two?”
Now this remark was slyly made while Susan was at the other end of the room, so that she could hear it, but was not supposed to. He did not look at her for some time, and then her face was scarlet.
The next day he said privately to old Merton: “The day Susan and I go to church together, you must let me take your engagements and do the best I can with them.”
“Ah, John, you are a friend! but it will take a pretty deal to set me straight again.”
“How much? Two thousand?”
“More, I am afraid, and too much—”
“Too much for me to take out of my pocket for a stranger; but not for my wife's father—not if it was ten times that.”
From that hour Meadows had an ally at Grassmere, working heart and soul to hasten the wedding-day.
Meadows longed for this day; for he could not hide from himself that as a lover he made no advances. Susan's heart was like a globe of ice; he could get no hold of it anywhere. He burned with rage when the bitter truth was forced on him, that, with the topic of George Fielding, he had lost those bright, animated looks of affection she used to bestow on him, and now could only command her polite attention, not always that. Once he ventured on a remonstrance—only once.
She answered coldly that she could not feign; indifferent she was to everything on earth, indifferent she always should be. But for that indifference she should never have consented to marry him. Let him pause then, and think what he was doing, or, better still, give up this folly, and not tie an icicle like her to an honest and warm heart like his.
The deep Meadows never ventured on that ground again. He feared she wanted to be off the marriage, and he determined to hurry it on. He pressed her to name the day. She would not.
“Would she let him name it?”
“No.”
Her father came to Meadows' assistance. “I'll name it,” said he.
“Father! no! no!”
Old Merton then made a pretense of selecting a day. Rejected one day for one reason, another for another, and pitched on a day only six weeks distant.
The next day Meadows bought the license. “I thought you would like that better than being cried in church, Susan.” Susan thanked him and said, “Oh, yes.”
That evening he had a note from her in which “she humbly asked his pardon, but she could not marry him; he must excuse her. She trusted to his generosity to let the matter drop, and forgive a poor brokenhearted girl who had behaved ill from weakness of judgment, not lightness of heart.”
Two days after this, which remained unanswered, her father came to her in great agitation and said to her: “Have you a mind to have a man's death upon your conscience?”
“Father!”
“I have seen John Meadows, and he is going to kill himself. What sort of a letter was that to write to the poor man? Says he, 'It has come on me like a thunder-clap.' I saw a pistol on his table, and he told me he wouldn't give a button to live. You ought to be ashamed of yourself trifling with folks' hearts so.”
“I trifle with folks' hearts! Oh! what shall I do!” cried Susan.
“Think of others as well as yourself,” replied the old man in a rage. “Think of me.”
“Of you, dear father? Does not your Susan think of you?”
“No! what will become of me if the man kills himself? He is all I have to look to, to save me from ruin.”
“What, then?” cried Susan, coloring scarlet, “it is not his life you care for, it is his means of being useful to us! Poor Mr. Meadows! He has no friend but me. I will give you a line to him.” The line contained these words: “Forgive me.”
Half an hour after receipt of it Meadows was at the farm. Susan was going to make some faint apology. He stopped her and said: “I know you like to make folk happy. I have got a job for you. A gentleman, a friend of mine in Cheshire, wants a bailiff. He has written to me. A word from me will do the business. Now is there any one you would like to oblige? The place is worth five hundred a year.” Susan was grateful to him for waiving disagreeable topics. She reflected and said: “Ah! but he is no friend of yours.”
“What does that matter if he is yours?”
“Will Fielding.”
“With all my heart. Only my name must not be mentioned. You are right. He can marry on this. They would both have starved in 'The Grove.'”
Thus he made the benevolent girl taste the sweets of power. “You will be asked to do many a kind action like this when you are Mrs. Meadows.” So he bribed father and daughter each after their kind.
The offer came in form from the gentleman to Will Fielding. He and Miss Holiday had already been cried in church. They were married, and went off to Cheshire.
So Meadows got rid of Will Fielding at a crisis. When it suited his strategy he made his enemy's fortune with as little compunction as he would have ruined him. A man of iron! Cold iron, hot iron, whatever iron was wanted.
Mr. and Mrs. Fielding gone off to Cheshire, and Mrs. Holiday after them on a visit of domestic instruction, Meadows publicly announced his approaching marriage with Miss Merton. The coast being clear, he clinched the last nail. From this day there were gusts of repugnance, but not a shadow of resistance on Susan's side. It was to be.
The weather was fine, and every evening this man and woman walked together. The woman envied by all the women; the man by all the men. Yet they walked side by side like the ghosts of lovers. And, since he was her betrothed, one or two iron-gray hairs in the man's head had turned white, and lines deepened in his face. The victim had unwittingly revenged herself.
He had stabbed her heart again and again, and drained it. He had battered this poor heart till it had become more like leather than flesh and blood, and now he wanted to nestle in it and be warmed by it. To kill the affections and revive them at will. No!!!!
She tried to give happiness and to avoid giving pain, but her heart of hearts was inaccessible. The town had capitulated, but the citadel was empty yet impregnable. And there were moments when flashes of hate mingled with the steady flame of this unhappy man's love, and he was tempted to kill her and himself.
But these weaknesses passed like air, the iron purpose stood firm. This day week they were to be married. Meadows counted the days and exulted; he had faith in the magic ring. It was on this Monday evening then they walked arm in arm in the field, and it so happened that Meadows was not speaking of love, but of a scheme for making all the poor people in Grassmere comfortable, especially of keeping the rain out of their roofs and the wind out of what they vulgarly, but not unreasonably, called their windys, and Susan's color was rising and her eyes brightening at this the one interesting side marriage offered—to make people happy near her and round about her, and she cast a look of gratitude upon her companion—a look that, coming from so lovely a face, might very well pass for love. While thus pleasantly employed the pair suddenly encountered a form in a long bristling beard, who peered into their faces with a singular expression of strange and wild curiosity and anxiety, but did not stop; he was making toward Farnborough.
Susan was a little startled. “Who is that?”
“I don't know.”
“He looked as if he knew us.”
“A traveler, I think, dearest. The folk hereabouts have not got to wear those long beards yet.”
“Why did you start when he passed us?”
“Did I start, Susan?”
“Your arm twitched me.”
“You must have fancied it,” replied Meadows, with a sickly smile; “but, come, Susan, the dew is falling, you had better make toward home.”
He saw her safe home, then, instead of waiting to supper as usual, got his horse out and rode to the town full gallop.
“Any one been here for me?”
“Yes! a stranger.”
“With a long beard?”
“Why, yes, he had.”
“He will come again?”
“In half an hour.”
“Show him into my room when he comes, and admit no one else.”
Meadows was hardly seated in his study and his candles lighted when the servant ushered in his visitor.
“Shut both the doors, and you can go to bed. I will let Mr. Richards out.”
“Well?”
“Well, we have done the trick between us, eh?”
“What made you come home without orders?” asked Meadows, somewhat sternly.
“Why, you know as well as me, sir; you have seen them?”
“Who?”
“George Fielding and his mate.”
Meadows started. “How should I see them?”
“Sir! Why, they are come home. They gave me the slip, and got away before me. I followed them. They are here. They must be here.” Crawley, not noticing Meadows' face, went on. “Sir, when I found they had slipped out of the camp on horseback, and down to Sydney, and saw them with my own eyes go out of the harbor for England, I thought I should have died on the spot. I thought I should never have the courage to face you, but when I met you arm in arm, her eye smiling on you, I knew it was all right then. When did the event come off?”
“What event?”
“The marriage, sir—you and the lady. She is worth all the trouble she has given us.”
“You fool,” roared Meadows, “we are not married. The wedding is to be this day week!” Crawley started and gasped, “We are ruined, we are undone!”
“Hold your bawling,” cried Meadows, fiercely, “and let me think.” He buried his face in his hands; when he removed them, he was gloomy but self-possessed. “They are not in England, Crawley, or we should have seen them. They are on the road. You sailed faster than they; passed them at night, perhaps. They will soon be here. My own heart tells me they will be here before Monday. Well, I will beat them still. I will be married Thursday next.” The iron man then turned to Crawley, and sternly demanded how he had let the man slip.
Crawley related all, and as he told his tale the tone of Meadows altered. He no longer doubted the zeal of his hireling. He laid his hand on his brow and more than once he groaned and muttered half-articulate expressions of repugnance. At the conclusion he said moodily: “Crawley, you have served me well—too well! All the women upon earth were not worth a murder, and we have been on the brink of several. You went beyond your instructions.”
“No, I did not,” replied Crawley; “I have got them in my pocket. I will read them to you. See! there is no discretion allowed me. I was to bribe them to rob.”
“Where do I countenance the use of deadly weapons?”
“Where is there a word against deadly weapons?” asked Crawley, sharply. “Be just to me, sir,” he added in a more whining tone. “You know you are a man that must and will be obeyed. You sent me to Australia to do a certain thing, and you would have flung me to perdition if I had stuck at anything to do it. Well, sir, I tried skill without force—look here,” and he placed a small substance like white sugar on the table.
“What is that?”
“Put that in a man's glass he will never taste it, and in half an hour he will sleep you might take the clothes off his back. Three of us watched months and months for a chance, but it was no go; those two were teetotal or next door it.”
“I wish I had never sent you out.”
“Why,” replied Crawley, “there is no harm done, no blood has been spilled except on our own side. George Fielding is coming home all right. Give him up the lady, and he will never know you were his enemy.”
“What!” cried Meadows, “wade through all these crimes for nothing? Lie and feign, and intercept letters, and rob and all but assassinate—-and fail? Wade in crime up to my middle, and then wade back again without the prize! Do you see this pistol? it has two barrels; if she and I are ever parted it shall be this way—I'll send her to heaven with one barrel, and myself to hell with the other.”