Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
Tremenhere stopped as if transfixed by a bolt of iron, and stared in speechless wonder in his companion's face. Skaife continued speaking, mistaking the dark cloud of demoniacal expression crossing that handsome face, for indignation towards himself for his free speech; for this he little cared.
”Mr. Burton's ardent, but heartless, pursuit of the girl till her ruin ensued, proves a deeper motive, I fear, than pa.s.sion; the same revenge towards you, may urge----” He said no more.
”Stop!” cried Miles, in a voice of thunder, and he grasped the other's arm, and arrested his footsteps. His whole power of utterance above a whisper seemed to have been expended in that one word; for his voice became a mere breath like a dying man's, as he asked, while that strong, robust frame tottered beneath his heart's weight in his agony, ”Do I understand you aright, that Mary Burns has been seduced, and by Marmaduke Burton?”
”Alas, yes! I thought you understood so from your words in that cottage.” Poor Skaife was pale with emotion; the other had not changed, his blood stood still, only the muscles had given way beneath the blow.
There was a long silence; Miles still grasped his arm till it fell from that clasp at last, powerless to hold it--they were near the stile leading into the lane where Mary's cottage was situated.
”Does Miss Dalzell know this?” inquired Miles, as if one thought, rus.h.i.+ng with the many through his brain, found an outlet.
”The ruin, but not the man,” answered Skaife.
”G.o.d bless her, then!” burst from the suffering man's lips, and with that blessing the blood flowed once more through his frame. It was as a gush of molten lead, forcing its way outwards, burning as it rushed; his face became dark and lurid, and his flas.h.i.+ng eyes looked wildly forward.
”I have not words to thank you with, for all you have done,” he cried in a hoa.r.s.e, unnatural voice, grasping Skaife's hand. ”We shall soon, very soon, meet again;” and with one bound he cleared the stile, and almost like thought stood before the terrified Mary Burns, who had sunk in a chair when they departed, almost fainting, from fear of the result of their conversation; and now she felt how well grounded that terror had been when Miles strode into the cottage. She knew his ungovernable pa.s.sion when excited by injury or villainy in another--in her terror she rose before him: ”Miles!” she almost screamed.
”Not Miles!” he cried, ”but the spirit of his mother returned to condemn you; an angel who breathed on you from her own pure lip, who strove to instil her purity into your polluted soul--Devil's child!” and he grasped her trembling arm--he was pitiless, scarcely human, in his rage then--as he continued, ”to hear such counsels, to breathe the atmosphere of such a presence, and turn to your h.e.l.l again! Could not even her dying blessing, which fell united on both of us, cleanse you? Could you find no fitter object for your impure love than him, the man who has branded her memory with so foul a stain, who has driven her son, almost your brother, forth, a beggar, and nameless! If there's one drop of human blood in you, woman, shed it in tears for your baseness! Oh, heavens!” and he looked fixedly forward like a man in a trance, ”give me power to call down on this creature the reward of her foul work!”
”Do not curse me, Miles,” she shrieked, dropping on her knees and clasping them, ”have mercy on me--have mercy on me!”
It was a fearful picture on which the curate at that moment looked unseen through the open door; _they_, in their agony, and the poor old mother totally unconscious of all, some happy thoughts evidently crossing her mind, for she was smiling, and endeavouring to rub her paralyzed hands together at the joyous dream. Skaife involuntarily drew back, and leaned against the door-post to keep away other witnesses, should the voices within attract notice in the adjoining cottages.
Miles's hand was pa.s.sed painfully over his face and brow--he had flung his hat aside.
”Have pity, Miles!” she cried, her eyes streaming with tears which nearly choked her, as she clasped her hands, and kneeling, looked up to where he stood, for he had shaken her off as she clung to him. ”But if you knew what dreadful struggles of nearly maddening power ground my heart down to bitterness, and _revenge_,” (she almost whispered the last word,) ”before I committed this fearful sin against myself, _you_, and, far more than all, the memory of your sainted mother, you might find some excuse. You cannot forget how my presumptuous heart, forgetting all but her more than woman's kindness, dared to lose sight, from her gentleness, of the distance between us, and loved you. You cannot forget the day I dreamed you returned it, and boldly confessed mine; you were calm, dignified, manly, and generous, when you said you never could return it--that I had mistaken you, and you hoped myself, and when you drew me to your heart with a _brother's_ love--Oh, may you never know such humiliation as _I_ felt then, which turned to a blacker feeling afterwards, fostered by him; for when you, for my sake, absented yourself from home for months, you cannot know how this weak heart was worked upon by _him_. He had seen all, guessed all; and, unsuspecting his motives, I one day confessed the truth to him. From that hour he became the friend, the comforter; he alone spoke hope to me--a hope his every action discredited faith in. Then your mother died; events were drawing to a close; you returned, no thought of love in your heart; I repressed my mad affection for you, but I was weighed to earth by the effort. I was but a girl of eighteen in a villain's hands, when the downfall of all came; your father's death, your banishment----”
”And did not all these sad events, Mary,” and his voice was low and trembling as he looked down upon the cowering woman, ”soften your heart to pity, not revenge? Our affections are not our own; we are not masters of these but by many a hard struggle. I never could have loved you more than as a sister: it was not pride, Mary; we have none of that with those we love. I loved you very truly for your own sake, for the sake of our happy days of childhood together, and for my mother's sake.” As the last words fell from him, the man, for a moment spirit-broken and agonized, sunk down on a chair, and, leaning his head on his arm across the table, wept like any woman over the ruin before him, and his memory of another. He had not one selfish thought; he was iron for himself,--for others, as a child at heart in love and gentleness. She rose, and, creeping to his side, took the hand which, clenched in its agony, rested on his knee, and, dropping on hers, she covered it with tears and kisses. ”Forgive me, Miles,” she sobbed, ”for you know not all I endured of trial before I fell. He told me you had scoffed at my love--to him. It was not the work of a day or hour; it is nearly eight long years since you quitted this place; for more than four we have not met; for less than that s.p.a.ce I have been the guilty creature I now am!”
Insensibly his hand unclenched and clasped her's; she continued sobbing between each scarcely-articulate word, ”When, by every artifice man could employ, he led me to error; and, ever since, this most bitter repentance. 'Twas done under the promise of making me his wife, to show _you_ that _he_ appreciated my worth. And when he said you not only had repulsed my love, but scorned it----”
”He lied, Mary, he lied!” articulated the sorrowing man, looking up; ”from _me_ he never heard of our love; he must have divined it.”
”G.o.d help me!” she uttered, kissing his clasping hand, ”for I have suffered much; and it was my refusal (for years now) to continue in my error, which has made him persecute me so of late. I told him last time we met, that _I loved you still, and ever should_.” These last words were scarcely breathed.
”Heaven help you, my poor girl!” cried Miles, looking at her as he placed a hand gently on her head; ”for what can that love bring you?--Sorrow and disheartenment in every effort for existence; a log to hamper every step of your pathway to independence! Rise up, Mary,” and he drew her on his heart; ”come what may, my girl, these arms will shelter you still from the cold, heartless world. I am richer now, Mary, and to-morrow you and that poor old woman shall leave this place; and once away, oh, then!----” He spoke the last words with a stern resolution.
”What, Miles?” and she clasped his clenched hand in her's, and gazed terrified in his flas.h.i.+ng eyes.
”I'll return to my home abroad,” he uttered, dropping them to conceal _their_ speech, lest she should read aright.
CHAPTER VI.
”I'm sure,” said Sylvia Formby, rocking herself backwards and forwards in her chair, about an hour after Minnie's return, ”I don't know what _can_ be done with this girl; she certainly is a dreadful cause of anxiety to all, and especially to poor me!” She was one of those who delighted in being miserable. One would really have imagined, from her manner and conversation about her, that Minnie was one of the very worst girls in existence--an unruly, impossible-to-govern creature. Aunt Sylvia was in her own room; and opposite to her, shaking her head in sorrowing sympathy, perched on the edge of a chair, sat Mrs. Gillett.
”Young ladies is a dreadful responsibility,” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the latter guardedly, (it was safe speaking in general terms;) ”all ar'n't as you was, Miss Sylvia!”
”I'm sure I don't know what _is_ to be done with my niece,” continued the other, unnoticing the compliment. ”I feel some harm will happen to her, if she be not married out of the way. What with your master's obstinacy, and Miss Dorcas's dulness of comprehension, the girl will a.s.suredly be lost unless I exert myself.”
”In coorse, Miss,” ventured the listener.