It was an awful feeling, the next that passed over the soul of Ruth Tudor, as she stood alone in the pale sorrowful-looking moonlight, endeavouring to remember what had chanced. She gazed on the purse, on the chasm, wiped the drops of agony from her heated brow, and then, with a sudden pang of recollection, rushed down to the cavern. The light was still burning, as Rhys had left it, and served to shew her the wretch extended helplessly beneath the chasm. Though his body was crushed, his bones splintered, and his blood was on the cavern’s sides, he was yet living, and raised his head to look upon her, as she darkened the narrow entrance in her passage: he glared upon her with the visage of a demon, and spoke like a fiend in pain. “Me hast thou murdered!” he said, “but I shall be avenged in all thy life to come. Deem not that thy doom is fulfilled, that the deed to which thou art fated is done: in my dying hour I know, I feel what is to come upon thee; thou art yet again to do a deed of blood!” “Liar!” shrieked the infuriated victim. “Thou art yet doomed to be a murderer!” “Liar!” “Thou art—and of—thine only child!” She rushed to him, but he was dead.
Ruth Tudor stood for a moment by the corpse blind, stupefied, deaf, and dumb; in the next she laughed aloud, till the cavern rung with her ghastly mirth, and many voices mingled with and answered it; but the noises scared and displeased her, and in an instant she became stupidly grave; she threw back her dark locks with an air of offended dignity, and walked forth majestically from the cave. She took the horse by his rein, and led him back to his stable: with the same unvarying calmness she entered her cottage, and listened to the quiet breathings of her sleeping child; she longed to approach her nearer, but some new and horrid fear restrained her, and held back her anxious step: suddenly remembrance and reason returned, and she uttered a shriek so full of agony, so loud and shrill, that her daughter sprung from her bed, and threw herself into her arms.
It was in vain that the gentle Rachel supplicated her mother to find rest in sleep. “Not here,” she muttered, “it must not be here; the deep cave and the hard rock, these shall be my resting place; and the bedfellow, lo! now, he waits my coming.” Then she would cry aloud, clasp her Rachel to her beating heart, and as suddenly, in horror thrust her from it.
The next midnight beheld Ruth Tudor in the cave, seated upon a point of rock, at the head of the corpse, her chin resting upon her hands, gazing earnestly upon the distorted face. Decay had already begun its work; and Ruth sat there watching the progress of mortality, as if she intended that her stern eye should quicken and facilitate its operation. The next night also beheld her there, but the current of her thoughts had changed, and the dismal interval which had passed appeared to be forgotten. She stood with her basket of food: “Wilt thou not eat?” she demanded; “arise, strengthen thee for thy journey; eat, eat, thou sleeper; wilt thou never awaken? look, here is the meat thou lovest;” and as she raised his head, and put the food to his lips, the frail remnant of mortality shattered at her touch, and again she knew that he was dead.
It was evident to all that a shadow and a change was over the senses of Ruth; till this period she had been only wretched, but now madness was mingled with her grief. It was in no instance more apparent than in her conduct towards her beloved child: indulgent to all her wishes, ministering to all her wants with a liberal hand, till men wondered from whence she derived the means of indulgence, she yet seized every opportunity to send her from her presence. The gentle-hearted Rachel wept at her conduct, yet did not complain, for she believed it the effect of the disease, that had for so many years been preying upon her soul. Her nights were passed in roaming abroad, her days in the solitude of her hut; and even this became painful, when the step of her child broke upon it. At length she signified that a relative of her husband had died and left her wealth, and that it should enable her to dispose of herself as she had long wished; so leaving Rachel with her relatives in N—, she retired to a hut upon a lonely heath, where she was less wretched, because abandoned to her wretchedness.
In many of her ravings she had frequently spoken darkly of her crime, and her nightly visits to the cave; and more frequently still she addressed some unseen thing, which she asserted was for ever at her side. But few heard these horrors, and those who did, called to mind the early prophecy, and deemed them the workings of insanity in a fierce and imaginative mind. So thought also the beloved Rachel, who hastened daily to embrace her mother, but not now alone as formerly; a youth of the village was her companion and protector, one who had offered her worth and love, and whose gentle offers were not rejected. Ruth, with a hurried gladness, gave her consent, and a blessing to her child; and it was remarked that she received her daughter more kindly, and detained her longer at the cottage, when Evan was by her side, than when she went to the gloomy heath alone. Rachel herself soon made this observation, and as she could depend upon the honesty and prudence of him she loved, she felt less fear at his being a frequent witness of her mother’s terrific ravings. Thus all that human consolation was capable to afford was offered to the sufferer by her sympathising children.
But the delirium of Ruth Tudor appeared to increase with every nightly visit to the cave of secret blood; some hideous shadow seemed to follow her steps in the darkness, and sit by her side in the light. Sometimes she held strange parley with this creation of her phrensy, and at others smiled upon it in scornful silence; now, her language was in the tones of entreaty, pity, and forgiveness; anon, it was the burst of execration, curses, and scorn. To the gentle listeners her words were blasphemy; and, shuddering at her boldness, they deemed, in the simple holiness of their own hearts, that the evil one was besetting her, and that religion alone could banish him. Possessed by this idea, Evan one day suddenly interrupted her tremendous denunciations upon her fate, and him who, she said, stood over her to fulfil it, with imploring her to open the book which he held in his hand, and seek consolation from its words and its promises. She listened, and grew calm in a moment; with an awful smile she bade him open, and read at the first place which should meet his eye: “from that, the word of truth, as thou sayest, I shall know my fate; what is there written I will believe.” He opened the book, and read—
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I go up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, thou art there; If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”
Ruth laid her hand upon the book: “it is enough; its words are truth; it hath said there is no hope, and I find comfort in my despair: I have already spoken thus in the secrecy of my heart, and I know that he will be obeyed; the unnamed sin must be—.” Evan knew not how to comfort, so he shut up his book and retired; and Rachel kissed the cheek of her mother, as she bade her a tender good night. Another month and she was to be the bride of Evan, and she passed over the heath with a light step, for the thought of her bridal seemed to give joy to her mother. “We shall all be happy then,” said the smiling girl, as the youth of her heart parted from her hand for the night; “and heaven kindly grant that happiness may last.”
The time appointed for the marriage of Rachel Tudor and Evan Edwards had long passed away, and winter had set in with unusual sternness even on that stormy coast; when, during a land tempest, on a dark November afternoon, a stranger to the country, journeying on foot, lost his way in endeavouring to find a short route to his destination, over stubble fields and meadow lands, by following the footmarks of those who had preceded him. The stranger was a young man, of a bright eye and a hardy look, and he went on buffeting the elements, and buffeted by them, without a thought of weariness, or a single expression of impatience. Night descended upon him as he walked, and the snow storm came down with unusual violence, as if to try the temper of his mind, a mind cultivated and enlightened, though cased in a frame accustomed to hardships, and veiled by a plain, nay almost rustic exterior. The thunder roared loudly above him, and the wind blowing tremendously, raised the new-fallen snow from the earth, which, mingling with the showers as they fell, raised a clatter about his head which bewildered and blinded the traveller, who, finding himself near some leafless brambles and a few clustered bushes of the mountain broom, took shelter under them to recover his senses, and reconnoitre his position. “Of all these ingredients for a storm,” said he smilingly to himself, “the lightning is the most endurable after all; for if it does not kill, it may at least cure, by lighting the way out of a labyrinth, and by its bright flashes I hope to discover where I am.” In this hope he was not mistaken: the brilliant and beautiful gleam shewed him, when the snow shower had somewhat abated, every stunted bush and blade of grass for some miles, and something, about the distance of one, that looked like a white-washed cottage of some poor encloser of the miserable heath upon which he was now standing. Full of hope of a shelter from the storm, and, lit onwards by the magnificent torch of heaven, the stranger trod cheerily forwards, and in less than half an hour, making full allowance for his retrograding between the flashes, arrived at his beacon the white cottage, which, from the low wall of loose limestones by which it was surrounded, he judged to be, as he had already imagined, the humble residence of some poor tenant of the manor. He opened the little gate, and was proceeding to knock at the door, when his steps were arrested by a singular and unexpected sound; it was a choral burst of many voices, singing slowly and solemnly that magnificent dirge of the church of England the 104th psalm. The stranger loved music, and the sombrous melody of that fine air had an instant effect upon his feelings; he lingered in solemn and silent admiration till the majestic strain had ceased; he then knocked gently at the door, which was instantly and courteously opened to his inquiry.