“Ay, my young lord; but first let them write down what I’ve said, and let me put my name to it. All the more because he’s dead and gone this day.”
“Everything shall be done as you wish,” said Geoff anxiously; “but come with me—come with me—my poor woman; this is not a place for you.”
“No,” she said—she would not rise from her seat. She turned round to the table where Sir Henry and his clerk sat. “I must end my work now it’s begun—I’ve another son, my kind gentlemen, and he will never forgive me if I do not end my work. Write it out and let me sign. I have but my Dick to think of now.”
A thrill of horror ran through the little assembly: to tell her that he too was gone, who would dare to do it? John Musgrave, whom she had not seen, stood behind, and covered his face with his hands. Sir Henry, for all his steady nerves and unsympathetic mind, fell back in his chair with a low groan. Only young Geoff, his features all quivering, the tears in his eyes, stood by her side.
“Humour her,” he said. “Let her have her own way. None of us at this moment surely could refuse her her way.”
The lawyer nodded. He had a heart of flesh and not of stone; and ’Lizabeth sat and waited, with her hands clasped together, her head a little raised, her countenance beyond the power of painting. Grief and joy mingled in it, and relief and anguish. Her eyes were dilated and wet, but she shed no tears; their very orbits seemed enlarged, and there was a quivering smile upon her mouth—a smile such as makes spectators weep. “Here I and sorrow sit.” There was never a king worthy the name but would have felt his state as nothing in this presence. But there was no struggle in her now. She had yielded, and all was peace about her. She would have waited for days had it been necessary. That what she had begun should be ended was the one thing above all.
A man came hurriedly in as all the people present waited round, breathless and reverential, for the completion of her testimony. Their business, whatever it was, was arrested by force of nature. The kind old Dogberry from the village, who had been standing by John Musgrave’s side by way of guarding him, put up his hand to his forehead and made a rustic bow to his supposed prisoner. “I always knowed that was how it would turn out,” he said, as he hobbled off, to which John Musgrave replied only by a faint smile, but stood still, as motionless as a picture, though all semblance of restraint had melted away. But while all waited thus reverentially a sudden messenger came rushing in, and addressing Sir Henry in a loud voice, announced that the coroner had sent him to make preparations for the inquest. “And he wants to know what time it will be most convenient for the jury to inspect the two bodies; and if they are both in the same place; and if it’s true.”
There was a universal hush, at which the man stopped in amazement. Then his eye, guided by the looks of the others, fell upon the old woman in the chair. She had heard him, and she was roused. Her face turned towards him with a growing wonder. “She here! O Lord, forgive me!” he cried, and fell back.
“Two bodies!” she said. A shudder came over her. She got up slowly from her seat and looked round upon them all. “Two—another, another!—oh, my unhappy lad!” She wrung her hands and looked round upon them, “Maybe another house made desolate; maybe another woman—Will you tell me who the other was?”
Here the labouring man, who had been with Wild Bampfylde on the hill-side, and who was standing by, suddenly succumbed to the strange horror and anguish of the moment. He burst out loudly into tears, crying like a child. “Oh, poor ’Lizabeth, poor ’Lizabeth!” he cried; he could not bear any more.