At Last.
Brace Norton, on his return from the marsh, had been wandering about in a strange, restless fashion; which troubled those who, unknown to himself, had been watching him keenly day after day. For the eyes of father and mother had met, for each to read the other’s thoughts, as they recalled a scene which took place in a pine wood directly after a wedding, many years ago.
“I don’t fear it of him,” said Captain Norton, quietly; “but if you wish it—”
“How can you read my thought so well?” said Mrs Norton, sadly. “It is indeed my wish. He has now just taken the direction of the marsh again.”
“I will not leave him again until he seems calm and resigned to his fate,” said Captain Norton.
“Calm—resigned,” said Mrs Norton, mournfully. “Then there is no hope for him, poor boy?”
“Hope? Not in that direction, I fear,” said the Captain; and he strode after his son.
It required no great exertion to overtake the young man; and, ready to suspect danger, Captain Norton viewed with anxious heart the strange, vacant look in his son’s face.
“Off for another walk, Brace?” he said, cheerfully, as he clapped him on the shoulder.
“Yes,” said Brace, drearily.
“Be a man, Brace,” said his father, in a low, earnest voice; and he stood for a few moments clasping his son’s hands in his own. “I, too, have suffered, Brace!”
“I know it—I know it!” said Brace, in the same sad, listless way, “and I’ll try and bear it; but oh! father, my heart feels desolate!”
“Come, I’m going to see how the works progress. You’ll go with me: to-morrow we’ll start early, and go away for a few days.”
Brace allowed his father to take his arm, and he walked with him mile after mile, listening, apparently, to his descriptions of the progress of the drain, till, evening drawing on, they came round by the old pine grove, crossed it at one end, where the evening breeze was sighing with a low, murmuring noise amidst the boughs over head—a sound as of waters breaking upon a distant shore.
In spite of Captain Norton’s efforts to be cheerful, he felt now that he had made a grievous mistake in the route he had chosen; for the solemn whisperings of the gloomy old pine wood had their influence even upon him; and, as his heart beat painfully, he shudderingly recalled the past. So strong were the impressions made by memory, that he had not a word to say in opposition when Brace gently disengaged his arm, and seated himself upon one of the fallen trunks, to bury his face in his hands. Captain Norton even felt that he could have followed his son’s example, as, like spectres of the past, came trooping by the thoughts and scenes of the bygone, as the old pine wood grew more and more dim and sombre, for the sun had just dipped below the distant horizon.
There was the old scene at the church porch; the encounter at the rectory; the walk over the moor; his madman’s acts; and, lastly, his awaking to the fact that the devoted woman who had followed him was lying bleeding at his feet—perhaps breathing her last sighs. Then came a change, and he saw again Marion, his old love, returned from abroad; the meeting in his own garden; the scene at the party; the disappearance of the cross; the blow stricken by Sir Murray Gernon; and, lastly, the news that Lady Gernon had, in one short hour, as it were, passed from this life. And now, here was his son—apparently persecuted by the same sad fate—crouching before him, heart-broken and despairing. What was in the future for them both?
He asked himself the question; and then, as if electrified, he started, and stood listening.
“What was that, Brace?” he cried, excitedly.
“Nothing but the men leaving work,” said the young man drearily.
“Nonsense!—rouse yourself!” cried the Captain, “and come on: there is something wrong. Hark at the hurried buzz of voices! The dam must have burst! Let us go.”
“It is only the wind in the pine-tops sighing as if all the sad spirits of the air were there in debate,” said Brace. “I like staying here, father; for it is as if one was once more at sea, with the heralds of the coming storm whispering through the rigging, and telling the news of the fierce winds, soon to shake spar and cord. Father,” he said dreamily, “I ought not to have stayed at Merland so long.”
“There is something going on out there!” cried the Captain, who had not heeded his son’s words. “Come, Brace—once more be a man, and let us go and see.”
The young man started up, and together they hurried to where the navvies had been at work, to find that, half-drunken, they had neglected to see to the security of a dam, beneath which they were working, and it had burst, sweeping all before it, tearing down and scooping out the sides of the drain; and Brace and his father arrived in time to save the lives of two of the men, whom the water had swept some distance down.
But no lives were lost, and soon, the water having passed, the men collected where they had been at work, one angrily blaming the other as being the cause of the mischief.
“Are you all here?” exclaimed Captain Norton in his sharp, short, military way. “Count up!”
“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Where’s Joe Marks?” cried the ganger, counting.
“Here, all right!” growled a wet savage, who was vainly trying to ignite his pipe with some sodden matches.
“Where’s Sol Dancer?” cried the ganger, after another spell at counting.
“Oh! he’s over there,” said another with a grin. “You couldn’t drownd he, if you was to try.”
“We’re all right, sir!” said the ganger. “We was going to work another hour, as they lost a lot o’ time this morning; but it’s all over now for to-night. Nice job to get straight again in the mornin’. But, hallo! what’s that?”
He was about to step forward, through the soft peat mire, when he was pressed back by Captain Norton, to whom and to his son had come in one and the same instant, the revelation of the second part of the Merland mystery; and together they leaped down into the great cutting, to wade through up to their waists in the black, decayed bog vegetation. They needed no words for explanation; the tufts of little forget-me-nots and silky cotton rush growing around, and yet untouched by the navvies’ spades, told all; for there, in the side of the great drain, where the rush of water had, in its fierce eddy, scooped out a vast mass of peat, stood, perfectly upright, with hands clasped together as if in prayer, her head thrown back, as if to give the last glance upward, towards the haven of rest, the body of Marion Lady Gernon.
Foul play? Treachery there was none, save that of the deceitful moss spread over the soft peat—a verdant carpet over black relentless death from which there was no escape. Even yet, tightly clasped within her fingers, were the remains of the specimens she must have been gathering when the moss gave way, and she sank, apparently without a struggle, from the eyes of the world.
There was no horrible decay here—no frightful repelling change; the peat had the strange preservative character within it of holding unaltered that which it took to itself; and as the body of a poor Saxon woman was once found, after probably fifteen hundred years’ immersion, so was found that of Marion Lady Gernon.
The truth at last—the dread truth, proclaiming itself, trumpet-tongued, for all men to hear—proclaiming innocence, and wronging suspicion, suffering, and death. The last veil was lifted from the past; and as the truth shone forth, clear and bright, foul suspicion and lying scandal shrank away abashed from the bright light to the dark shades where they had been engendered.
“The truth at last!” groaned Philip Norton, elderly and grey now, as he stood, with clasped hands, gazing at the silent dead—“the truth at last, and now he will believe.”
The navvies shrank back in half dread at the strange sight for a few minutes; and when, recovering, they would have advanced, Brace motioned them back, and he alone heard his father’s words.
“At last—at last! what I have prayed for so long. At last! Oh Heaven! I loved her too well to have sullied her even in thought!”
He stood motionless for a few minutes, and then, by a fierce effort, he started back into life.
“Let no hand but ours rest upon her, Brace,” he whispered; and then, of the woodwork near, a litter was hastily contrived, and on a bed of the heather and rush, amidst which she had loved to linger, the sleeping figure was slowly borne towards the village, till, as they neared the Park, Brace left his father to prepare those at the Castle for the awful visitation.