“What did you mean by it?” cried the gentle Vicar, in high excitement;—“did you think I did not know my duty? did you think I was a cold-blooded reptile like—like the man that sent that? Do you think it was in me to betray my brother? I know nothing bad enough for him who made such a suggestion. And he nearly gained his point. The devil knows what tools to work with. He works with the weakness of good people as well as with the strength of bad,” cried mild Mr. Pen, inspired for once in his life with righteous indignation. “Judas did it himself at least, bad as he was. He did not whisper treason in a man’s ears nor in a woman’s heart.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Randolph, with guilt in his face.
“Not all, no; fortunately you don’t know, nor any one else, the trouble you might have made. But no less, though it never came to pass, was it that traitor’s fault.”
“When you take to speaking riddles I give it up,” said Randolph, shrugging his shoulders.
But Mr. Pen was so hot in moral force that he was glad to get away. He slept one night under his father’s roof, no one giving him much attention, and then went away, never to return again; but went back to his believing wife, too good a fate, who smoothed him down and healed all his wounds. “My husband is like most people who struggle to do their duty,” she said. “His brother was very ungrateful, though Randolph had done so much for him. And the little boy, who had been dreadfully spoiled, ran away from the school when he had cost my husband so much trouble. And even his sister Mary showed him no kindness; that is the way when a man is so disinterested as Randolph, doing all he can for his own family, for their real good.”
And this, at the end, came to be what Randolph himself thought.
Mrs. Pen, after coming home hysterical from Elfdale, made a clean breast to her husband, and showed him the telegram, and confessed all her apprehensions for him. What could a man do but forgive the folly or even wickedness done for his sweet sake? And Mrs. Pen went through a few dreadful hours, when in the morning John Musgrave came back from his night journey and the warrant was put in force. If they should hang him what would become of her? She always believed afterwards that it was her William’s intervention which had saved John, and she never believed in John’s innocence, let her husband say what he would. For Mrs. Pen said wisely, that wherever there is smoke there must be fire, and it was no use telling her that Lord Stanton had not been killed; for it was in the last edition of the Fellside History, and therefore must be true.
When all was over Sir Henry and Lady Stanton made a formal visit of congratulation at Penninghame. Sir Henry told John that it had been a painful necessity to issue the warrant, but that a man must do his duty, whatever it is; and as, under Providence, this was the means of making everything clear he could not regret that he had done it now. Lady Stanton said nothing, or next to nothing. She talked a little to Mary, making stray little remarks about the children, and drawing Nello to her side. Lilias she was afraid of, with those great eyes. Was that child to be Geoff’s wife? she thought. Ah! how much better, had he been the kind young husband who should have delivered her own Annie or Fanny. This little girl would want nothing of the kind; her father would watch over her, he would let no one meddle with her, not like a poor woman with a hard husband and stepdaughters. She trembled a little when she put her hand into John’s. She looked at him with moisture in her eyes.
“I have always believed in you, always hoped to see you here again,” she said.
“Come, Mary, the carriage is waiting,” said Sir Henry. He said after that this was all that was called for, and here the intercourse between the two houses dropped. Mary could not help “taking an interest” in John Musgrave still, but what did it matter? everybody took an interest in him now.