CHAPTER XLVIII.
Crowds came and went to and from Elmsly House. For a long week the little world of the neighbourhood was kept in agitation by facts and falsehoods. Coroner's juries sat, and returned a verdict as much opposed to common sense as usual. The constables from S---- went back to their own place unaccompanied, and lost their labour. The Great Devourer had swallowed up the destined prey of judges and juries. Sir William Winslow was pronounced to have destroyed himself in a moment of temporary insanity; and there is no trying the dead for murder. The people viewed the plain and unostentatious funeral with feelings of greater awe than is usually felt; for crime, by its happy rarity, has a greater effect than common death. Wild tales were told; some near to, some far from, the truth; and the nine days' wonder subsided, leaving the sky clear, and the waters smooth again.
So much for the outside of Elmsly House. In the inside, other scenes were taking place. Chandos did not quit the house, but, with his solicitor, remained in possession of that which was now his own; but the second night after the fatal event, when the coroner had sat and his jury had returned their verdict, the old servant Jacob came to his young master in the library, to tell him that there was a woman walking round and round the house, and weeping. "I saw her just now, Sir," said the man; "and she seems flesh and blood; but were it not for that, I could almost swear that it was poor Susan Grey, of the mill, who drowned herself, you may remember."
"She was saved, my good friend," answered Chandos. "I will go and speak to her."
He went, and what took place he did not ever care to repeat; but on his return he ordered the hall door to be left open night and day, and no one to oppose the entrance of that woman at any time, or to speak to her if they saw her. Each night she visited the room where the body of Sir William Winslow lay, and sat beside it from the hour of midnight till the east grew gray. On the night before the funeral she covered the coffin with ivy-leaves, and lingered till it was quite light ere she departed. Chandos Winslow was already up; and a servant, who watched at the door, instantly gave him notice that she was going forth. He followed her at once, and spoke to her both long and earnestly. The servants from the windows saw him show her a paper too; but she did not return with him to the house, which they judged by his gestures that he asked her to do.
On the following day, he and the boy Tim went out on foot, in deep mourning, and remained away for several hours; and in the evening they set out for London.
The first visit of Chandos was, as might be expected to the house of General Tracy; but he had little more to tell than the party there already knew, for his letters had been frequent during the last week. He thought Rose looked more lovely than ever; and though all that she had gone through, and the dark events which had connected themselves with the rise and progress of their love, had cast a saddening shade over the sparkling brightness of her face, yet there seemed to the eyes of Chandos more gained than lost by that softening melancholy. When Emily appeared, she was in mourning, not very deep, yet sufficient to mark a sense of the painful circumstances under which she had been freed from her ill-starred engagement to his brother. She greeted him warmly and affectionately; and gazed at him and Rose as they sat together on the sofa, as if she fancied, in her desponding mood, that in their happiness would consist her future. A brighter fate, however, was reserved for her at last.
A good deal of business remained for Chandos to transact. His brother's will, by which a thousand per annum was bequeathed to "the boy, now under the charge of Chandos Winslow, Esq.," was proved; and, to avoid all doubt or cavil which such vague expressions might cause at a future period, Chandos at once secured the annuity to his little protégé by deed. With Lord Overton, he found no difficulty. The production of his father's second will showed at once that Sir William Winslow had no power to sell the Winslow Abbey estate; and the money to repay the sum which had been received as part payment was easily raised upon the Elmsly property. The remainder of the rents of that portion of his land the young baronet set aside as a sinking-fund to pay off the encumbrance; and from that source, with the money in the public funds, the property was cleared in a few years. When all the necessary arrangements were complete in London, Chandos left the little boy at the house of General Tracy, and went down again to prepare Winslow Abbey for the reception of a bride. Much was wanting; but skill, and taste, and ample means accomplished with great speed the reparation of all that many years of neglect had done to dilapidate the building, and desolate the grounds.
It was one day while thus employed that he was joined in the park by Lockwood, who came to tell him that a young gipsey had been to his house to ask where Chandos was, and to request him to come down to the wood on the other side of the river.
"I fear," said Lockwood, "that poor girl is very ill, from what the lad told me."
Chandos went instantly to the spot pointed out, and found the apprehensions of Lockwood fully verified. Under a coarse, dingy blanket, hung between two trees, to give more air than one of the ordinary gipsey tents afforded, with dimmed eyes and sunken cheeks, lay the once lovely Susan Grey. Her mind was wandering very much; but she knew Chandos at once; and from time to time the troubled stream of her thoughts seemed to become suddenly clear. The young gentleman remained by her side for more than two hours with several of the gipsies, both male and female, looking on. In the course of her rambling and broken conversation, much of her preceding history was told. It seemed that when she had cast herself headlong from the bank into the river, near Elmsly, some gipsies had been passing by; and an old man, the head of the tribe, had rescued her. It was an exploit of his old age, and he was proud of it; and loving her because he had saved her from destruction, he adopted her as his daughter. Her superior knowledge, for she had been carefully educated, and even the occasional aberration of her intellect, and the quick decision of character which bitter misfortune sometimes gives, soon obtained for her great consideration in the tribe, which was confirmed by the accidental fulfilment of many of her fortunate guesses. So of course we must call them; but it is to be remarked that she herself, even in her last hour, maintained that her predictions proceeded from a real foresight of coming events. Although she had eagerly sought to see Chandos, he could only discover that she had one request to make, and that referred to her interment.
"Let me have Christian burial," she said more than once; "for I die a Christian; and lay me beside him who should have been my husband."
Chandos promised, and he kept his word; for, much to the scandal of some, the poor miller's erring daughter, the wandering gipsey woman, lies in the vault of the Winslow family.
"Ay, she came to choose her place more than a month ago," said the old sexton, after the funeral: "she gave me two golden sovereigns one night, to let her have the keys of the vault for two hours; and I knew very well what she came for, so I didn't disturb her."
It was in the brown autumn time that Rose Tracy gave her hand to Chandos Winslow; and at Christmas the whole party assembled round the fire at Northferry. By the side of Emily, whose cheek had regained the rose, and whose lip had won back its smiles, sat Horace Fleming. He looked very happy. Something was whispered to Emily, while the rest were busy with other things. "No Horace," she said; "yet three months, and then if you will."
A few other characters remain to be disposed of; but as no great length of time has passed since the events just detailed took place, the fate of several of our people is still hanging in the balance where we weigh till death. Little Tim is now, I believe, at Eton; and is a remarkably intelligent and amiable boy. The young gentleman will excuse my not mentioning the name he now goes by. It is neither Winslow nor Stanley. Lockwood is precisely the same being as when Chandos first met with him--down to the leather gaiters. One satisfactory thing has occurred within my own knowledge. The Italian, Benini, is working in chains at Leghorn. He went into the service of a Russian nobleman, who, to Benini's great grief, was cruelly assassinated at Sienna. The police of Tuscany, however, did not like Benini to be so much afflicted; and they tried him for murder. He persisted in declaring his innocence; but the incredulous brutes would not believe him; and under the mild laws of that mild government, he was condemned to hard labour for life.
One word more: Mr. Scriptolemus Bond is a Valet de Place, in Paris, where he exercises his abilities in the same direction as before, though in a narrower sphere. He, however, is contented with his fate, although repinings will sometimes visit him, especially when a share list meets his eyes.
On the contrary, Chandos Winslow, and Rose his wife, are contented, without repining. They may have to suffer some evils, as a healthy man will have a cold now and then; but if we were to look into all hearts, the grand secret which they would display is this, that, balance the account of life how we will, the sum of happiness is in favour of virtue. Without it, there is no contentment; and with it, the peace of God which passes all understanding, surpasses everything that earth can give.