Old ’Lizabeth, as she made her way to Stanton, was followed everywhere by the same atmosphere of sympathy. The women came out to their doors to look after her, and even strong men sobbed as she passed. What would become of her, poor lonely woman? She gave a great cry when she saw the two pale faces lying peacefully together. They were both men in the full prime of life, in the gravity of middle age, fully developed, strongly knit, men all formed for life, and full of its matured vigour. They lay side by side as they had lain when they were children. That one of them had taken the life of the other, who could have imagined possible? The poacher and vagrant looked like some great general nobly dead in battle, the madman like a sage. Death had redeemed them from their misery, their poverty, the misfortunes which were greater than either. Their mother gave a great cry of anguish yet pride as she stood beside them. “My lads,” she cried, “my two handsome lads, my bonny boys!” ’Lizabeth had come to that pass when words have no meaning to express the depths and the heights. What could a woman say who sees her sons stretched dead before her? She uttered one inarticulate wail of anguish, as a dumb creature might have done, and then her overwrought soul reeling, tottered almost on the verge of reason, and she cried out in pride and agony, “My handsome lads! my bonny boys!”
“Come home with me,” said John Musgrave. “We have made a bad business of it, ’Lizabeth, you and I. This is all our sacrifice has come to. Nothing left but your wreck of life, and mine. But come home with me. Where I am, there will always be a place for Lily’s mother. And there is little Lily still, and she will comfort you—— ”
“Eh! comfort me!” She smiled at the word. “Nay, I must go to my own house. I thank you, John Musgrave, and I do not deserve it at your hand. This fifteen years it has been me that has murdered you, not my lad yonder, not my Abel. What did he know? And I humbly beg your pardon, and your little bairns’ pardon, on my knees—but nay, nay, I must go home. My own house—there is no other place for me.”
They came round her and took her hands, and pleaded with her too—Geoff, and his mother, with the tears streaming from her eyes. “Oh, my poor woman, my poor woman!” Lady Stanton cried, “stay here while they are here.” But nothing moved ’Lizabeth. She made her little curtsey to them all, with that strange smile like a pale light wavering upon her face.
“Nay, nay,” she said. “Nay, nay—I humbly thank my lady and my lord, and a’ kind friends—but my own house, that is the only place for me.”
“But you cannot go so far, if that were all. You must be worn out with walking only—if there was nothing more—— ”
“Me—worn out!—with walking!” It was a kind of laugh which came from her dry throat. “Ay, very near—very near it—that will come soon, if the Lord pleases. But good-day to you all, and my humble thanks, my lord and my lady—you’re kind—kind to give them house-room; till Friday; but they’ll give no trouble, no trouble!” she said, with again that something which sounded like a laugh. Laughing or crying, it was all one to ’Lizabeth. The common modes of expression were garments too small for her soul.
“Stay only to-night—it will be dark long before you can be there. Stay to-night,” they pleaded. She broke from them with a cry.
“I canna bide this, I canna bide it! I’m wanting the stillness of the fells, and the arms of them about me. Let me be—oh, let me be! There’s a moon,” she added, abruptly, “and dark or light, I’ll never lose my way.”
Thus they had to leave her to do as she pleased in the end. She would not eat anything, or even sit down, but went out with her hood over her head into the gathering shadows. They stood watching her till the sound of her steps died out on the way—firm, steady, unfaltering steps. Life and death, and mortal anguish, and wearing care, had done their worst upon old ’Lizabeth. She stood like a rock against them all.