NOTWITHSTANDING the personal violence which, it was to be feared, Doctor Rowel might receive by making his appearance upon the scene of his former crimes, he no sooner was informed of the total destruction of his establishment, and of nearly all the property it contained, as related in the preceding chapter, than he grew half frantic, and immediately declared his resolution to visit the place, be the consequences of his temerity what they might.
Accordingly, in a state of excitement bordering closely on absolute derangement, he set off from York on the following morning, in as private and unobserved a manner as possible. The alertness, however, of the public eye was too great to suffer him wholly to escape; and as he was driven at a rapid pace through the streets of the city, the scornful hisses and execrations of many of the people trebly increased his excitement, by making him feel that most bitter of all feelings in its bitterest form—that he had become despicable and odious in the eyes of his fellow men, and henceforward could no longer hope to dwell amongst them, save as one liable to be continually pointed at, to be shunned, perhaps plainly and openly insulted, without any living creature looking upon him as worthy of receiving pity.
On arriving at his late residence, he beheld only a black ruin in the midst of desolation, with but one solitary object near it which had survived the general destruction—and that was the old yew-tree under which James Woodruff had passed so many weary years, and which now brought back to the Doctor's eye, suddenly and completely, as might the drawing up of a curtain, a perfect picture of all the past that had led to this sad scene. The tree used to look black before, but now amidst greater blackness and the smoke and ruin of the place it grew in, it looked green; gaily green in the sunshine, as though even it rejoiced and felt glad over the wild justice that had overtaken one guilty of so many crimes as was he who once oppressed the helpless there unopposed. He could have hewn that tree by the roots, for the thoughts it awoke in his mind, and wished it burnt to a pillar of charcoal along with all else that was blasted and calcined about it.
Outside was a throng of gazers, kept off partly by the rural constabulary, and partly by some of the yeomanry of the district. These he hated for their idle curiosity, their prying into other people's business; and could he have had his will, would have swept the ground clear of them at one stroke of his arm.
Standing on a rising knoll at some little distance, he recognised Squire Lupton and James Woodruff, with his daughter Fanny, gazing over the ruins, and watching with deep interest the progress of the workmen, who were busily employed in recovering from the hot ruins as much of the property on the premises as might have escaped with only partial or no damage. At that sight—
“each passion dimm'd his face,
Thrice chang'd with pale ire, envy, and despair.”
He would have got out, but he dared not. He felt as though the people would murder him, and cast him into the mouldering heaps of his own house.
Unrecognised in his carriage he was secure; and having drawn up pretty closely to the spot where the last-named little party stood, he gazed with an intensity of look almost indescribable upon the operations going on amongst the ruins. It was plain that some strange idea had come into his mind; it seemed written in his very features that something might be found there which he would have no man know: a thing for his eyes only, and not to be seen by such men as those.
“But it was a wooden box,” thought he again, “and it must be burnt. It could not escape—it is not likely—not possible. No, no; not possible.”
And yet, as he comforted himself thus, that possibility was still standing on his brow as plainly as did the mark on Cain's:—the mark that told ineffaceably before heaven and earth his guilt, and warned every man he met to shun him.