’Lizabeth looked at this man with the air of one awakening from a dream. Then she turned a look of inquiry upon those around her. No one would meet her eye. They shrank one behind another away from her, and more than one man burst forth into momentary weeping like the first, and some covered their faces in their hands. Even Geoff, sobbing like a child, turned away from her for a moment. She held out her hands to them with a pitiful cry, “Say it’s not that—say it’s not that!” she cried. The shrill scream of anguish ran through the house. It brought Lady Stanton and all the women shuddering from every corner. They all knew what it was and how it was. The mother! What more needed to be said? They came in and surrounded her, the frivolous girls and the rough women from the kitchen, all together, while the men stood about looking on. Not even Sir Henry could resist the passion of horror and sorrow which had taken possession of the place. He cried with a voice all hoarse and trembling, “Take her away!—take her away!”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE TRAGEDY ENDS.
’Lizabeth Bampfylde went on to Stanton that same afternoon, where the remains of her two sons were lying. But she would not go in Lady Stanton’s carriage.
“Nay, nay; carriages were never made for me. I will walk, my lady. It’s best for me, body and soul.”
She had recovered herself after the anguish of that discovery. Before the sympathisers round her had ceased to sob, ’Lizabeth had raised herself up in the midst of them like an old tower. The storm had raged round her, but had not crushed her. Her face and even her lips had lost all trace of colour, her eyes were hollow and widened out in their sockets, like caves to hold the slow welling out of salt tears. There was a convulsive trembling now in the pose of her fine head, and in her hands; but her strength was not touched.
“Oh, how can you walk?” Lady Stanton said; “you are not able for it.”
“I am able for anything it’s God’s pleasure to send,” she said; “though it’s little even He can do to me now.” The women stood round her with pitiful looks, some of them weeping unrestrainedly; but the tears that ’Lizabeth shed came one by one, slow gathering, rarely falling. She put on her red handkerchief over her cap again, with hands that were steady enough till that twitch of nervous movement took them. “It should be black,” she said, with a half-smile; “ay, I should be a’ black from head to foot, from head to foot, if there was one left to mind.” Then she turned upon them with again her little stately curtsey. “I’m not a woman of many words, and ye may judge what heart I have to speak; but I thank ye all,” and, with once more a kind of smile, she set out upon her way.
John Musgrave had been standing by; he had spoken to no one, not even to Lady Stanton, who, trembling with a consciousness that he was there, had not been able, in the presence of this great anguish, to think of any other. He, and his story, and his return, altogether had been thrown entirely into the background by these other events. He came forward now, and followed ’Lizabeth out of the gate. “I am going with you,” he said. The name “mother” was on his lips, but he dared not say it. She gave a slight glance at him, and recognised him. But if one had descended from heaven to accompany her, what would that have been to ’Lizabeth? It was as if they had parted yesterday.
“Ay,” she said; then, after a pause, “it’s you that has the best right.”
The tragedy had closed very shortly after that penultimate chapter which ended with the death of Wild Bampfylde. When the carriage and its attendants arrived to remove him to Stanton he was lying on Geoff’s shoulder, struggling for his last breath. It was too late then to disturb the agony. The men stood about reverentially till the last gasp was over, then carried the vagrant tenderly to the foot of the hill, with a respect which no one had ever shown him before. One of the party, a straggler, who had strayed further up the dell in the interval of waiting, saw traces above among the broken bushes, which made him call some of his comrades as soon as their first duty was done. And there on the little plateau, where Walter Stanton’s body had been found fifteen years before, lay that of his murderer, the madman who had wrought so much misery. He was found lying across the stream as if he had stooped to drink, and had not been able to raise himself. The running water had washed all traces of murder from him. When they lifted him, with much precaution, not knowing whether his stillness might mean a temporary swoon, or a feint of madness to beguile them, his pale marble countenance seemed a reproach to the lookers-on. Even with the aspect of his victim fresh in their eyes, the men could not believe that this had ever been a furious maniac or man slayer. One of them went to look for Geoff, and to arrest the progress of the other funeral procession. “There’s another one, my lord,” he said, “all torn and tattered in his clothes, but with the look of a king.” And Geoff, notwithstanding his horror, could not but look with a certain awe upon the worn countenance. It might have been that of a man worn with great labours, with thought, with the high musings of philosophy, or schemes of statesmanship. He was carried down and laid by the side of his brother whom he had killed. All the cottagers, the men from the field, the passengers on the way, stood looking on, or followed the strange procession. Such a piece of news, as may be supposed, flew over the country like wildfire. There was no family better known than the Bampfyldes, notwithstanding their humble rank. The handsome Bampfyldes: and here they had come to an end!