CHAPTER XXV.
AN UNEXPECTED GUEST.
Six days had come and gone since her lover's departure from Gethin, but no tidings of him had reached Harry's ears. Solomon had returned on the second day, and been closeted with her father for some hours, doubtless in consultation about Richard; but not a word had been spoken of him, in her presence, by either. She dared not mention him to her father, and still less could she apply for information to his rival, her now affianced bridegroom. How much, or how little, her father had disclosed concerning him to Sol she did not know; but the latter had evidently closed with the terms which she had in her late strait accepted on her own part. The bans had been put up in the church upon the hill, and in a month she would be this man's wife. She had been congratulated upon the coming event by all the neighbors. Some had slyly hinted—little guessing the pain they gave to that sore heart—at her late "goings-on" with that young gentleman-painter; they had almost suspected at one time that he would have supplanted her old flame; but they were glad to see matters as they were. Solomon was a steady, sagacious man, as every body knew, and would get on in the world; and what he gained he would not waste in foolish ways. Such an old friend of her father's, too. Nothing could be more fitting and satisfactory in all respects. Solomon, notoriously a laggard in love, was likened to the tortoise, who had won the race against the hare.
To have to listen to all this well-meant twaddle was misery indeed. Perhaps, upon the whole, good honest dullness does unknowingly inflict more grievous wounds than the barbed satiric tongue.
To think, to picture to herself the condition of her lover—deplorable, she was convinced, from the grim satisfaction upon Solomon's face when he first came back—was torture. She could not read, for her mind fled from the page, like breath from a mirror; there was nothing for it but occupation. She busied herself as she had never done before with the affairs of the house, which afforded some excuse for escaping from Sol's attentions, naturally grown somewhat pressing, now that his wedded happiness was drawing so near. The Gethin Castle was not, however, very full of guests. It had been wet for a few days, and rain spoils the harvest of the inn-keeper even more than that of the farmer. One night, when it was pouring heavily, and such a windfall as a new tourist was not to have been expected by the most sanguine Boniface, a lady arrived, alone, and took up her quarters in the very room that Richard had vacated. Trevethick himself was at the door when she had driven up and asked with some apparent anxiety whether she could be accommodated. She was wrapped up, and thickly veiled, but he had observed to his daughter what a well-spoken woman she was, and an uncommon fine one too, though her hair was gray. She had inquired whether there were any letters waiting for her, addressed to Mrs. Gilbert; but there was no letter.
Harry took in the new arrival's supper with her own hands. It was the time when she would otherwise have been expected in the bar parlor, to sit by Solomon's side, and feel his arm creep round her waist, more hateful than a serpent's fold. A fire had been lit in the sitting-room, on account of the inclement weather, and Mrs. Gilbert was standing beside it with her elbow on the mantel-piece. She watched Harry come in and out, without a word, but the expression of her face was so searching and attentive that it embarrassed her. Under other circumstances she would certainly have delegated her duties to Hannah, but to evade Solomon's society she would have waited on the Sphinx. She brought in each article one at a time, and when there was nothing more to bring inquired deferentially whether there was any thing else that she could do for the lady.
"Yes," said Mrs. Gilbert, gravely; the voice was soft, but the manner most earnest and impressive. "I want five minutes' talk with you; can I have it secure from interruption?"
"Certainly, madam," answered Harry, trembling, she knew not why.
"Close the door, girl. Come nearer, and away from the window; we must not be overheard."
Harry was constitutionally timid, and it struck her that this poor lady was not in her right mind. She hesitated. The other seemed to read her thoughts.
"I am not mad, child," said she, sorrowfully, "though I have trouble enough to make me so. You are the daughter of the landlord of this inn, I think?"
"Yes, madam."
"And I am the mother of Richard Yorke."
She was standing in the same position, and had spoken coldly and as sternly as such a voice as hers could speak, when something in the young girl's face caused her whole manner to change. With a sudden impulse she turned toward her, and held out both her arms; and Harry threw herself into them with a passionate cry, and sobbed as though her heart would break.
"Hush! hush!" whispered the other, tenderly; "we must not weep now, but act!"
But the girl still sobbed on, without lifting up her face. Tears had been strangers to her heated eyes for days, and she had longed in vain for one sympathizing breast on which to lay her head. "I have been his ruin," she murmured; "but for me he would never have done wrong. How you, who are his mother, must hate me!"
"No, Harry, no!" answered the other, putting aside those rich brown locks, and gazing upon the fair shut face attentively. "I do not wonder at his loving you; for such beauty as yours many a man would lose his soul! I did hate you until now. But you love my Richard truly, as I see; and we two can not afford to be enemies. We must work together for his good to avert the ruin of which you speak, for it is imminent. He has sent me to you, for he can not come himself. He is in prison, Harry!"
"In prison! O Heaven, have mercy!"
She sank down on her knees, and covered her face with her hands.
"Yes, Harry, think of it. Our Richard, so bright, so dear, within prison walls! He may pass his life there for what he has done for your sake, unless you help him."
"Help him? I would die for him!"
"Calm yourself. Sit down. To grieve is selfish where one can do better; when all is lost it is time enough for that. All will be lost a fortnight hence, unless we bestir ourselves. Hush! I hear a step in the passage. Who is that?"
"It is Sol, madam—Solomon Coe."
"The man you are to marry, is it not?"
A stifled groan was the girl's reply.
"I can not speak what I have to say here," said the other, thoughtfully. "Is there no other place? Stay. I can be ill—overfatigued with my journey—and you will come and tend me in my own room presently. That can be managed, can't it?"
"Yes, madam, yes."
"Then wipe your eyes—be a brave girl. Think of Richard, and not of yourself—think of him, when yonder boor is clasping the hand that once rested in his—think of him, when those alien lips press yours at parting, and be strong! If I were in your place, he would find that I had not deserted him in his trouble."
"Desert him, madam? I? Oh, never!"
"To be weak is to desert him, girl—to let yonder man and your father suspect that any friend of Richard's is beneath this roof is to desert him—to weep when there is need to work is to desert him. Did I not tell you I was his own mother; and yet I shed no tears! Look up, and learn your lesson from me."
The faces of the two women were indeed in strong contrast—the younger, yielding, feeble, despairing; the elder, calm, patient of purpose, and inflexible. Her cheeks were plump, and radiant with health; her form erect and composed; her eyes, indeed, betrayed anxiety, but it was from want of confidence in the person she addressed, not in herself; the white hair seemed to fitly crown that figure, so full of earnestness and firmness.
"I will do my best," cried the young girl, "though I know I am but weak and foolish. Pity me, and pray for me. I am going to the torture, but I will be resolute. Tell Hannah—the servant-maid—that you wish me to attend you in your room. Send for me soon, for mercy's sake! How I long to know how I can help our Richard!"
As she left the room Mrs. Gilbert's face grew dark. "A fool! a dolt!" she muttered, angrily. "How could he risk so much for such a stake! Oh, Richard! Richard!"—her voice began to falter at that well-loved name—"was this to have been the end of all my hopes? What fatal issue, then, may not my fears have end in! my beautiful, bright boy! The only light my lonely life possessed! to think of you as like yourself, and then to think of you as you are now!" She looked around her on the sordid walls, the vulgar ornaments upon the mantel-piece, the wretched ill-chosen books; then listened to the splash of the rain in the unpaved street. "And this was Paradise, was it, my poor boy, because this girl dwelt in it! I ought to have known that there was danger here. His letters few and short and far between, his patient tarrying in so wild a place, should have been enough to warn me. But not of this; in no nightmare dream could I have conceived this unimaginable peril. Ah, me! ah, me!" She sat down at the untasted meal, and strove to eat. "I must be strong, for Richard's sake," she murmured. But she soon laid down her knife and fork to muse again. "This Trevethick is a hard, stern man, I see. There is no hope in his mercy. The only path of safety is that which the lawyer pointed out; but will this puling girl have the heart and head to tread it? Will she not faint, as she nearly did just now, and lose her wits when my Richard most requires them? And then, and then?" As if unable to continue such reflections, she rose and rang the bell, which Hannah answered.
"Bring me a bed-candle, girl; I will seek my room at once; and please ask Miss Trevethick to look in upon me before she retires herself, for I feel far from well."
"Yes, ma'am." Hannah thought within herself that the new arrival looked uncommon fresh and well considering her years, and that her young mistress had far more need of rest and "looking to" than she; but, nevertheless, she gave the message; and Harry, at her usual time for going to rest, repaired to the new-comer's room accordingly.
"Are they gone to bed, those men?" inquired Mrs. Gilbert, anxiously, as soon as the door was closed.
"No, madam; my father and Solomon always sit up together now till late."
"Ay; plotting against my boy, I doubt not. Well, let us, then, counterplot. Who sleeps on either side of this room?"
"No one, madam. Both rooms are empty at present; the last visitor, except yourself, left us this evening."
"And the servants?"
"They have retired long ago up stairs."
"That's well. Sit here, then, close to me, and listen. You know that Richard is in prison, placed there by your father and that other man on a false charge. They know as well as I or you that he had no intention of committing the crime of which he stands accused, and yet they both mean to swear the contrary."
"Oh, madam, they will surely not do that!"
"But I say 'Yes;' they want revenge upon him. I know them better than you, who have known them all your life; or perhaps you say they will not, because you hope so. Is it possible," she broke forth, impatiently, "that in such a strait as this, girl, you can encourage such delusions! You are like the fool in the Scripture, of whom it is written, that though thou shouldst bray him among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him."
"I know I am not like you, madam," answered Harry, piteously. "Richard has often told me how wise and brave you are; but yet my love for him is as great as yours can be. Whatever you think fit that I should do to help him, that shall be done. Trust me; it shall, indeed."
"That's well said, girl. Be you the hand, and I the head, then, of this enterprise, and we shall conquer yet. I say again, that if they could, these men would swear my Richard's life away. They might as well do that as what they mean to do, and deprive him of his liberty; cast him for years into prison, and herd with the worst and basest of mankind; to work under a task-master with irons on. Do you understand, girl, what it is to which, unless we can hinder them, these wretches would doom him?"
"Yes, yes, I do," she murmured, shuddering. "It is horrible, most horrible! God help us!"
"We must help ourselves," answered Mrs. Gilbert, sternly.
"Yet God is surely on our side, and for the truth, madam. If they swear falsely—"
"You must swear also," interrupted the other, angrily; "you must meet them with their own weapons, if you would defend the innocent against them. As it is, the law is with them, and will prove the instrument of their vengeance. The notes were found upon his person; he strove to change them, that he might pass their substitutes more easily. He counted upon your father not missing them from his strong-box until it was too late. The case is clear against him that he stole them."
"Great Heaven!" cried Harry, clasping her hands in agony; "and yet he did not mean to steal them."
"Of course not; nay more, he did not steal them, for you gave them to him."
"I gave them to him? Nay, I never did."
"You did—you did, girl; you acquiesced in his plan for obtaining your father's consent to your engagement; you undertook to supply him temporarily with the money requisite to establish his pretensions as a man of fortune. Or, if you did not"—and here her voice assumed an intense earnestness—"your Richard, the man you pretend to love, will be a convicted felon—a prisoner for all the summer of his life, and for the rest an outcast!"
Harry was silent; her hands were pressed to her forehead, as though to compel her fevered brain to think without distraction. "I see, I see," she murmured, presently; "his fate hangs upon my word. 'So help me, God,' is what I have first to say, and then say that!"
"Why not?" rejoined the other, stoutly. "Will not these men, too, call God to witness what they know to be a lie? Will not He discern the motive that prompts you—desire to see a wronged man righted, the innocent set free—and the motive that prompts them—malicious hate? Or do you deem the all-seeing eye of Heaven is purblind? I tell you this, girl, if I were in your place, and the man I loved stood justly in such peril, I would swear a score such oaths to set him free! Yet here, with justice on your side and truth, and Heaven itself, you hesitate; you shrink from uttering a mere form of words, the spirit of which is contrary to the letter, and for conscience sake, forsooth, will let your lover perish! Your lover! yes, but you were never his, although he thinks so. I will go hence, and tell him that you refuse to speak the thing that alone can save him from life-long wretchedness; I will go and tell him that the girl for whose sake he has brought this load of ruin on himself will not so much as lift it with her little finger! You fair, foul devil, how I hate you!" She drew herself up to her full height, and regarded the wretched girl with such contemptuous scorn that even in her abject misery she felt its barb.
"I have not earned your hate," said Harry, with some degree of firmness, "if I have earned your scorn; nor is it meet that you should so despise me, because I fear to anger God."
"And man," added the other, with bitterness. "You fear your father's wrath far more than Heaven's."
That bolt went home: the unhappy girl did indeed stand in greater terror of her father than of the sin of perjury; and the idea of affirming upon oath what she had but a few days before so solemnly denied to him was filling her with consternation and dismay. Still the picture that had just been drawn of the ruin that would assuredly befall her Richard, unless she interposed to save him, had more vivid colors even than that of Trevethick's anger. Let him kill her, if he would, after the trial was over, but Richard should go free.
"I will do your bidding, madam," said she, suddenly, "though I perish, body and soul."
"You say that now, girl, and it's well and bravely said; but will you have strength to put your words to proof? When I am gone, and there are none but Richard's foes about you, will you resist their menaces, their arguments, their cajolements, and be true as steel?"
"I will, I will; I swear it," answered Harry, passionately; "they shall never turn me from it. But suppose they prevent me from leaving Gethin, from attending at the trial at all?"
"Well thought of!" answered Mrs. Gilbert, approvingly; "she has some wits, then, after all, this girl. As for their forbidding you to give evidence, however, Mr. Weasel, who is Richard's lawyer, will see to that. You will be subpoenaed as a witness for the defense. You will say, then, that it was you who opened the strong-box, and took out the notes, and gave them into Richard's hand."
"But how could I open the letter padlock?"
"Good, again!" answered the other; "you have asked the very question for which I have brought the answer. Now, listen! Have you access to your father's watch at times when he does not wear it?"
"Yes; he does not always put it on—never on the day he goes to market, for instance. He comes back late, you see."
"Just so; and sometimes, perhaps, not altogether sober. Very good. Now, you once opened that watch from curiosity, and saw a paper in its case with B N Z upon it. Those letters formed the secret by which the lock was opened. You tried it, just in fun at first, and found they did. Do you understand?"
"I do," said Harry.
"You will not forget, then, what you have to say; or shall I recapitulate it?"
"There is no need," groaned Harry. "I shall remember it forever, be sure of that, and on my death-bed most of all." With a wearied look on her wan face, and a heavy sigh, the young girl rose to go. "Good-night, madam. We need not speak of this again to-morrow, need we?"
"Surely not, child. My mission here is done. The rain is falling still, and that will be a sufficient excuse for my departure. I had a sick headache to-night—remember that—but it will be better after a night's sleep."
"Do you sleep?" asked Harry, simply. "Ah me, I would that I could sleep!"
"Of course I do. Is it not necessary for Richard's sake that I should be well and strong? I could weep all night and fast all day, if I let my foolish heart have its own will. It is easy enough to grieve at any time; one has only to think to do that. Sleep, child, sleep, and dream of him as he will be when you have set him free; then wake to work his freedom. I will tell him that you will do so. Press your lips to mine, that I may carry their sweet impress back to him. One moment more. Do not get your lesson by heart, lest they should doubt you; but hold by this one sentence, and never swerve from it: 'I gave Richard Yorke the notes with my own hand.' That is the key which can alone unlock his prison-door. Good-night, good-night."