Morley wished him good night, and was about to proceed, but he thought he perceived a degree of hesitation in the man's manner, which made him pause for a moment. "You seem to have something more to tell me, Martin," he said; "speak without reserve, if you have."
"Why, there is a word or two, sir," replied Harry Martin, approaching close to his horse's side, and speaking in a low tone. "If things go right with me, and I get away, it's all well and good; but you know, sir, matters may go another way, and then the game's up. As for dying, I declare, I care no more about it, than about going to sleep; but you see, sir, there's my poor wife--she is as good a girl as ever lived, and I don't know how or why it is, but since we were married it has made a great difference in me. I am not half so wild as I was before; and I have got a sort of tenderness, if I may call it so, towards all women for her sake. I believe it is, that I did no rightly know what a good woman was before I married her; but it is very different now, and that is the only thing that rests upon my mind. You see, sir, she has never been used to hard work, but has been brought up as a sort of a lady, and if I were gone, what would come of her? I think, if I knew she would be well taken care of, I should not care for anything in life."
"Make your mind easy," said Morley, "though I cannot exactly say what I should be able to do for her under such circumstances; I will promise you to see her established in some honest way of life--some small school, or other thing, that does not imply any severe exertion."
The man made no answer, but he grasped the young Baronet's hand tight, in a way that was not to be mistaken, and thus they parted.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Morley Ernstein rode on more slowly than during the former part of his journey. His mood was changed, another spirit had come over him. It was no longer the rash, and reckless vehemence of bitter, perhaps we might call it angry, disappointment, that tenanted his bosom; but it was the dark, sad, listlessness of a heart which has given up all expectation for itself, and only lives faintly in its sympathies with others. If ever the poet's words were made true, it was in his case, for "black care did, indeed, sit behind the horseman," and was his only companion by the way. His mind rested frequently, it is true, upon the fate and character of the man he had just left, but it was with a vague, careless, indistinctness of thought, very, very different from the keen and eager scrutiny which he gave to every phase of human life, in former times. He thought too, occasionally, of himself--of the change which he felt had come upon him--of the lifelessness of the world around--of the painful memories of the past--of the dull and cheerless prospects of the future. He asked himself, what he should do to fill up existence? and he answered himself, with a bitter smile--"It will pass somehow, I suppose; and the space which now seems long, will probably then seem short. Man's eye in youth is at the wrong end of the telescope. It is in age that we see clearly how short are the spaces over which we have passed."
Thus musing, he wended on his way, his journey being much like the life he contemplated--dull, gloomy, dark, and long; but yet, mile after mile, slipping away he scarcely knew how. At length, he saw a faint redness in the sky before him, but took little notice, thinking that it was occasioned by another of the waste coal-fires. It grew redder and redder, however, and touches of warm yellow began to brighten the edges of the clouds--
"Can it be morning already?" he said; but the clear grey which took place of the blackness of night, soon shewed him, that another day had indeed begun.
A little more than an hour after dawn brought him to a bridge over a small stream, but he made his horse pass through the water, and suffered it to pause to drink. As he did so he gazed around him, and his eyes rested upon a scene strongly characteristic of that part of the country.
From the edge of the river stretched up a small field full of ripe corn, which, notwithstanding the advanced period of the year, had not yet felt the sickle. Beyond, the land rose, swelling gradually into a considerable hill, about half way up which appeared an old grey stone mansion, with a wide sort of park before it, spreading down to the edge of the cornfield, and covered with short grass. On either side of the house, stretching half way down the hill, with somewhat prim regularity of outline, was seen a large, dark mass of wood, leaving the open space of park lawn between, unencumbered by a single tree of any kind. The only object that broke the calm, still regularity of the scene was a group of fine deer, which trotted at an easy pace across the park, as if seeking for some other spot, where the herbage was richer, or the sheltering fern more abundant.