Chapter III
"Set is the sun of the Netterville's glory! Down in the dust its bright banners are trailing! Hoarse in our anguish we whisper the story, And men, as they listen, like women are wailing.
"Woe! woe to us--woe! we shall see him no more; Our tears like the rains of November are flowing; Woe! woe to us--woe! for the chief we deplore Alone to his exile of sorrow is going.
"Alone?--not alone! for our dastardly foemen-- As cruel as base in the day of their power-- Have lifted their hands against maidens and women; Uprooted the tree, and then trampled the flower.
"And so they have sent her to weep by strange waters-- The joy of our hearts and the light of our eyes-- The latest and fairest of Netterville's daughters, In whom the last link of their destiny lies.
"Sad will be, mother, thy waking to-morrow! Waking to weep o'er thy dove-rifled nest; Widowed and childless--two-fold is thy sorrow. And two-edged the sword that is lodged in thy breast.
"Well may we mourn her--when we too deplore her-- The vassals and serfs of thy conquering race; If blood could but do it, our blood should restore her-- Restore her to thee and thy loving embrace.
"Yet not for her only, or thee, are we weeping; We weep for our country, fast bound in that chain Which in blood from her wrung heart the foeman is steeping, Till it looks as if reddened and rusted by rain.
"Oh! when shall a leader to true hearts be given. To fall on the stranger and force him to flee? And when shall the shackles that bind her be riven? And Erin stand up in her strength, and be free!"
So sung Hamish, the son of the last of the long line of minstrels who, with harp and voice, had recorded the triumphs of the house of Netterville, or mourned over the death or sorrow of its chieftains. For, in spite of the law by which it was strictly forbidden, the English of the Pale had persisted in the national custom of keeping a bard or minstrel--whose office was always, or almost always, hereditary--attached to their households; and in its palmy days of power the family of Netterville was far too jealous of its own importance not to have been always provided with a similar appendage. Its last recognized minstrel had fallen, however, in the same battle which had deprived Nellie of her father, and, Hamish being then too young to take up his father's office, the harp had ever since, literally as well as figuratively, hung mute and unstrung in the halls of Netterville. But grief and indignation over its utter ruin had unlocked at last the tide of poetry and song, ever ready to flow over in the Celtic breast, and Hamish felt himself changed into a bard upon the spot. Forgetting the presence of the English soldiers, or, more probably, exulting in the knowledge that they did not understand the language in which he gave expression to his feelings, he stepped out into the midst of the people, pouring forth his lamentations, stanza after stanza, with all the readiness and fire of a born improvisatore; and when at last he paused, more for want of breath than want of matter, the keeners took up the tale, and told, in their wild, wailing chant, of the goodness and greatness, the glory and honour of their departed chieftain and his heiress, precisely as they would have done had the twain over whom they were lamenting been that very day deposited in their graves. Up to this moment Mrs. Netterville had preserved in a marvellous degree that statue-like calmness of outward bearing which hid, and even at times belied, the workings of a heart full of generous emotions; but the wild wailing of the keeners broke down the artificial restraint she had put upon her conduct, and, unable to listen quietly to what seemed to her ears a positive prophecy of death to her beloved ones, she hastily reëntered the house and retreated to her own apartment. {176} This was a small, dark chamber, which in happier times had been set apart as a quiet retreat for prayer and household purposes, but which now was the only one the mistress of the mansion could call her own--the soldiers having that very morning taken possession of all the others, devoting some of them to their own particular accommodation and locking up the others. It was, in fact, as a very singular and especial favour, and as some return for the kindness she had shown in nursing one of their number who had been taken suddenly ill on the night of their arrival, that the use even of this small chamber had been allowed her; for it was not the custom of Cromwell's army to deal too gently by the vanquished, and many of the "transplanted," as high-born and well-educated as she was, had been compelled, in similar circumstances, to retire to the outer offices of their own abode, while the rough soldiery who displaced them installed themselves in the luxurious apartments of the interior.
Hidden from all curious eyes in this dark retreat, Mrs. Netterville yielded at last to the cry of her weak human heart, and, flinging herself face downward on the floor, gave way to a passion of grief which was all the more terrible that it was absolutely tearless. One or two of the few remaining women of the household, knowing how fearfully her soul, in spite of all outward show of calmness, must be wrung, tapped occasionally at the door; but either she did not hear or did not choose to answer, and they dared not enter without permission.
At last one of them went to Hamish, feeling instinctively that, if any one could venture to intrude unbidden, it would be the foster-brother of Nellie, and said:
"The mistress, God help her! is just drowned with the sorrow, and won't even answer when we call. Hamish, a-bouchal, couldn't you manage to go in, just by accident like, and say something or other to give a turn to her thoughts?"
"Give a turn to her thoughts?" said Hamish crustily; "give a turn to her thoughts, do you say? My certie, but you take it easy! Hasn't the woman lost husband and child, to say nothing of the old lord, who was all as one to her as her own father? and isn't she going, moreover, to be turned out of house and home, and sent adrift upon the wide world? and you talk of giving a turn to her thoughts, as if it was the toothache she was troubled with or a wasp that had stung her?"
"As you please, Mr. Hoity-toity," said the girl angrily; "I only thought that, as you were a bit of a pet like, on account of our young mistress, you might have ventured on the liberty. Not having set up in that line myself, I cannot, of course, attempt to meddle in the matter."
But though Hamish had spoken roughly, his heart was very sore, for all that, over the sorrows of his lonely mistress.
He waited until Cathleen had vanished in a huff, and then, going quietly to the study-door, knocked softly for admission.
But Mrs. Netterville gave no sign, and, after knocking two or three times in vain, he opened the door gently and looked in. The room was naturally a gloomy one, being panelled in black oak; but Hamish felt as if it never could have looked before so gloomy as it did that moment. {177} Half study, half oratory as it was, Mrs. Netterville had spent here many a long hour of lonely and impassioned prayer, what time her husband and her father-in-law were fighting the battles of their royal and most ungrateful master. A tall crucifix, carved, like the rest of the furniture, in black oak, stood, therefore, on a sort of prie-dieu at the farther end of the room, and near it was a table arranged in desk-fashion, at which she had been in the habit of transacting the business of her household.
Room and prie-dieu, crucifix and table, Hamish had them all by heart already.
Here in his baby days he had been used to come, when he and his little foster-sister were wearied with their own play, to sit at the feet of Mrs. Netterville and listen to the tales which she invented for their amusement. Here, as time went on, separating Nellie outwardly from his society, yet leaving her as near to him in heart as ever, he had been wont to bring his morning offerings of fish from the running stream, or bunches of purple heather from the rocks. Here he had come for news of the war, and of the master, on that very day which brought tidings of his death; and here, too, even while he tried to comfort Nellie, who had flung herself down in her childish misery just on the spot where her mother lay prostrate now, he had wondered, and, young as he was, had in part, at least, comprehended the marvellous self-forgetfulness of Mrs. Netterville, who, in the midst of her own bereavement, had yet found heart and voice to comfort her aged father-in-law and her child, as if the blow which had struck them down had not fallen with three-fold force on her own head. In the darkness of the room and the confusion of his own thoughts, he did not, however, at first perceive Mrs. Netterville in her lowly posture, and glanced instinctively toward the prie-dieu, where he had so often before seen her take refuge in the hour of trial.
But she was not there, and a thrill of terror ran through his frame when he at last discovered her, face downward, on the floor, her widow's coif flung far away, and her long locks, streaked--by the hand of grief, not time--abundantly with gray, streaming round her in a disorder which struck Hamish all the more forcibly, that it was in such direct contrast to the natural habits of order and propriety she had brought with her from her English home. There she lay, not weeping--such misery as hers knows nothing of the relief of tears--not weeping, but crushed and powerless, as if her very body had proved unequal to the weight of sorrow put upon it, and had fallen beneath the burthen. She seemed, indeed, not in a swoon, but stunned and stupefied, and quite unconscious that she was not alone. Hamish trembled for her intellect; but young as he was, he was used to sorrow, and understood both the danger and the remedy.
His lady must be roused at any cost, even at that the very thought of which made him tremble, the recalling her to a full knowledge of her misery. He advanced farther into the room, moving softly, in his great reverence for her desolation, as we move, almost unconsciously to ourselves, in the presence of the dead, and occupied himself for a few minutes in arranging the loose papers on her desk, and the flowers which Nellie had placed upon the prie dieu only a day or two before. They were faded now--faded as the poor child's fortunes--but instead of throwing them away, he poured fresh water into the vase which held them, as if that could have restored their beauty. {178} Yet he sighed heavily as he did so for the thought would flash across his mind that, whether he sought to give, back life to a withered flower, or joy to the heart of a bereaved mother, in either case his task was hopeless. Mrs. Netterville took no notice of his proceedings, though, as he began to get used to the situation, he purposely made rather more bustle than was needed, in hopes of arousing her. At last, in despair of succeeding by milder methods, he let fall a heavy inkstand, smashing it into a thousand pieces, and scattering the ink in all directions, an event that in happier times would certainly not have passed unreproved. But now she lay within a few inches of the inky stream, as heedless as though she were dead in earnest; and, hopeless of recalling her to consciousness by anything short of a personal appeal, he knelt down beside her and tapped her sharply on the shoulder, half wondering at his own temerity as he did so. She shuddered as if, light as the touch had been, it yet had hurt her, and muttered impatiently, and like one half asleep:
"Not now, Hamish! not now!--leave me for the present, I entreat you!"
"And why not now?" Hamish answered almost roughly. "Do you think you only have a cause for grieving? Tell me, my mistress, if we, humble as we are, and not to be thought of in comparison with your ladyship's honor, if we have not lost--are losing nothing? Ah! if you could but hear the weeping and wailing that is going on among the creatures down-stairs, you would never do us such a wrong as to suppose that your heart is the only one sore and bleeding to-day!"
"Sore and bleeding! Yes! yes! I doubt it not," moaned the lady sadly. "Sore and bleeding; but not widowed--not childless; they have still husbands and children--they have not lost as I have lost!"
"They have lost--not, may be, quite so much, but yet enough, and more than enough, to set them wailing," answered Hamish firmly-- "they have lost a master, who was more like a father than a master, and a young mistress, who was all as one as a daughter to every one of them; and moreover," he added mournfully--"and moreover, instead of the kind hand and generous heart that has reigned over them till now, they are going to be handed over, (as if they were so many stocks or stones encumbering the land,) whether they like it or whether they don't, to the tender mercies of those very men who thought it neither sin nor shame to make the child a shield against the soldier's sword, when they fought knee-deep in blood at the siege of Tredagh!"
"Why do you say these things, Hamish?" she almost shrieked in her anguish. "Is it my fault? Could I help it? or why do you reproach me with it?"
"Your fault! No, indeed, it is not. More's the pity; for if you could have helped it, to a dead certainty it never would have happened," said Hamish, glad that he had roused her, even if only to a fit of anger. "But though you cannot prevent these things, my mistress, you can at all events comfort the creatures that have to bear them, by showing that you have feelings for their sorrows as well as for your own."
"I give comfort! God help me, I give comfort!" she answered, with a sort of passionate irony in her manner; adding, however, immediately afterward, in a softer tone, "How can I give comfort, Hamish--I who need it so entirely myself?"
{179}
"That is the very thing," cried Hamish eagerly. "God love you, madam! Do you not see that the only real comfort you could give them would be the allowing them to try at least and comfort you?"
"Bid them pray, then, for the safe journey of my loved ones," she answered hoarsely--"that is the only real comfort they can give me."
"And why, then, couldn't we pray all together?" cried Hamish, struck suddenly by a bright idea. "Why wouldn't you let them come up here, madam? I warrant you they would pray as the best of them never prayed before, if they only seen your ladyship's honor kneeling and praying in the midst of them."
"I--I cannot pray--I cannot even think," she answered, laying her head once more on her folded arms, like a weary or a chidden child. "Go you, good Hamish, and pray yourself with them down-stairs."
"In the kitchen, is it?" said Hamish, with a considerable portion of irony in his voice. "Faix, my lady, and it's queer thoughts we'd have, and queer prayers we would be saying there, with the pot forenent us, boiling on the fire, and Cromwell's black rogues of troopers coming and going, and flinging curses and scraps of Scriptures (according to their usual custom) in equal measure at our heads. No! no! my lady," he continued vehemently, "if you would have us pray at all, it must be here--here where the cross will mind us of a Mother who once stood at its foot, and who was even more desolate than you are; a Mother silent and heart-broken--not because her Child had gone before her into exile, from whence He might any day return, but because she saw Him dying--dying in the midst of tortures--and forsaken so entirely that it might well have seemed to her (only she knew that never could be) as if God as well as man had utterly abandoned Him."
"You are right, Hamish; you are right," cried Mrs. Netterville suddenly, touched to the quick by his voice and eloquence. "Go you down at once, good Hamish, and bid them come here directly. I shall be ready by the time they are assembled."
As Mrs. Netterville spoke thus, she rose from the floor, and then, all at once perceiving the strange disorder of her attire, she began hastily to gather up her tresses, previous to placing her widow's coif upon them.
Hamish waited to hear no more, but instantly left the room to do her bidding. As he walked rapidly toward the lower part of the mansion, he drew a long sigh of relief, like one who has just got rid of a heavy burden, as in truth he had; for he felt that he had gained his point, and that whatever his mistress might have yet to suffer, she was safe, at all events, from the effects of that first great shock of sorrow which had threatened to overturn her intellect.
When he returned to announce that the household was assembled and waiting for her further orders he found her kneeling at the prie-dieu, in all the grave composure of her usual manner. She did not trust herself, however, to look round, but merely signed to him that they should come in; and the instant the noise and bustle of their first entrance had subsided, she commenced reading from her open missal.
But the very sound of her own voice in supplicatory accents seemed to break the spell which had hitherto been laid upon her faculties. She fairly broke down and burst into a flood of tears. This was more than enough for the excitable hearts around her, and the room was filled in a moment with the wailing of her people. {180} Hamish was in despair; and yet, perhaps, no other mode of proceeding could have done so much toward calming her as did this sudden outburst; for Mrs. Netterville had a true Englishwoman's aversion to "scenes," however real and natural to the circumstances of the case they might be. She instantly checked her tears, and waiting quietly until the storm of grief had in some degree died out, she collected all her energies, and read in a low, steady voice the prayer or collect for those travelling by land or sea, as she found it in her missal. A few other short but earnest prayers succeeded, and then she paused once more. Her audience took the hint and quietly retired. Hamish was about to follow, but she rose from the prie-dieu, and signed to him to remain.
"Hamish," she said, gently but decidedly, "I have done your bidding, and now I expect that you will do mine. I wish to be alone for the rest of the day--do you understand? alone with God and my great sorrow! To-morrow I will begin the work for which I have been left here, but to-day must be my own. Come not here yourself, and look to it that no one else disturbs me. Keep a heedful watch upon the soldiers, and see that no mischance occurs between them and any of our people, I trust to you for this and all things. Now leave me. If I have need of anything, I will let you know."
There was that in Mrs. Netterville's tone and manner which made Hamish feel he had gone quite far enough already; so, without another word of remonstrance or expostulation, he made his reverence and retired.
Chapter IV
Mrs. Netterville waited until the echo of his retreating footsteps had died away in the corridor, and then fastening the door so as to secure herself from any further interruption from the outside, she once more fell on her knees before the crucifix, and buried her face in both her hands. How long she remained thus she never knew exactly; but the shades of a short January evening were already gathering in the room, when, with a start and a look as if her conscience smote her, she rose suddenly from her knees. "Christ pardon me!" she muttered half aloud, "that, in my own selfish sorrows, I have forgotten others! Poor wretch! By this time he must be well-nigh famished, if, indeed, (though I trust it will not,) the delay has not worked him deeper mischief."
As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she opened a cupboard close at hand, and drew from thence a bottle of wine, with some other articles of delicate food, packed carefully in a wicker-basket, and evidently left there for some especial purpose. She then sought through the gloom for a cloak, which she threw upon her shoulders, and, drawing the hood down over her face, and taking the basket on her arm, she hastily left the room. Not, however, by the door through which Hamish and the servants had retreated, but by another at the opposite end, and which was almost invisible, in consequence of its forming one of the panels in the black oak wainscoting of the chamber. It led her directly by a short stone passage to another door or low wicket, on opening which she found herself in the private grounds of the castle. Before her at no great distance, stood an old ivy-covered church, half hidden in a group of tall Irish trees, which sheltered its little cemetery. {181} This was not the parish church, but a private chapel, built by the Netterville family for their own particular use; and here their infants had been baptized, their daughters married, and their old men and women laid reverently to their last slumbers, ever since they had established their existence in the land.
Mrs. Netterville could not resist a sigh as she glanced toward its venerable walls. It seemed as if it were only yesterday that she had gone there to lay down her husband in his lowly grave, hoping and praying, out of the depths of her own great grief, that she might soon be permitted to sleep quietly beside him. And now, even this sad hope was to be hers no longer; this poor possession of six feet of earth was to be wrested from her; strangers would lay her in a distant grave, and even in death she would be separated from her husband. The thought was too painful to bear much lingering upon it, and turning her back upon the church, Mrs. Netterville followed a path which lay close under the castle walls, and led to a court-yard at a considerable distance. Round this court-yard were grouped stables and other offices, which, having been built at different periods and without any consecutive idea as a whole, presented rather the appearance of a collection of stunted farm-houses, than of the regular out-buildings of an important mansion.
Each of these houses had a private entrance of its own; and opening the door of one of them, Mrs. Netterville looked in quietly and entered. The interior was a room, poorly but yet decently furnished, and on a low settle-bed at the farther end lay a young man, who, with his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, had all the look of a person just rescued from the jaws of death. A knapsack on the floor, a pike and musket in one corner of the room, and a steel cap and buff coat in another, seemed to announce him as one of the band of successful soldiers who were even then in possession of the castle.
Poor fellow! he lay, with closed eyes, wan and weary, on his bed, looking, at that moment, like anything rather than like a successful soldier; but he lifted his head as he caught the noise of the door creaking on its hinges, and his face brightened into an expression of joy and gratitude pleasant to behold when he discovered Mrs. Netterville standing on the threshold.
"Can you ever forgive me?" she said, going up to him at once. "I cannot easily forgive myself for having left you so long alone. In the grief and anguish in which I have been plunged all day, I had well-nigh forgotten your existence, and you must be faint, I fear me, for want of nourishment."
"Nay, madam," he answered, gently, indeed, but yet with a good deal of that comfortable self-assurance in spiritual matters which seems to have been an especial inheritance of "Cromwell's saints." "If you have forgotten, the Lord at least hath been mindful of his servant, and hath cast so deep a slumber on my senses, that I have been altogether unconscious of the lapse of time, or of the absence of those carnal comforts which, however the spirit may rebel against them, are nevertheless not altogether to be despised, as being the means by which we receive strength to do the bidding of our Master."
Mrs. Netterville could not help thinking that the posset-cup and soothing draught, which she had administered the night before, might have had as much as any especial interposition of Providence to say to his seasonable slumbers; but the times were too much out of joint to permit of her making, however reverently, such an observation, so she merely touched his brow and hand, and said:
{182}
"I am right glad, at all events, that you seem in nowise to have suffered from my neglect. Eat now and drink, I pray you; for I perceive by this refreshing moisture on your skin that all danger has passed away, and that you need at present no worse physic than good food and wine to restore you to your former strength."
"Nay, madam," said the soldier, with great and hardly repressed feeling in his voice and manner. "Eat or drink I cannot, or in any way refresh myself, until I have poured forth my song of gratitude, first to the Lord of hosts, who hath delivered me from this great danger, and then to you, who have tended me (even as the widow of Sarepta might have waited on Elias) through the perils of a sickness from which my very comrades and fellow-laborers in the vineyard fled, trembling and afraid."
"You must pardon them, good Jackson," said Mrs. Netterville, "and all the more readily, because this disease, from which you have so marvellously recovered, is, men say, in its rapid progress and almost sure mortality, akin, if not indeed wholly similar, to that terrible malady the plague, which is the scourge of the Eastern nations, and leaves crowded cities, once it has entered in, as silent and deserted as the sepulchres of the dead. You cannot therefore wonder, and you need not feel aggrieved, if men who would have risked their lives for you on the battle-field, yet shrunk from its unseen, and therefore, to poor human nature, its more awful dangers."
"Nay, madam, I blame them not; perhaps even in their place I should have done the same. Nevertheless--and though I have no ill feeling toward them--I cannot forget that you, a Popish woman and an enemy, have done that for me which the very children of my own household have shrunk from doing, and I would fain show my gratitude if I could."
"You can show it, and that right easily, if you will," she answered kindly, "by eating and drinking heartily of the provisions I have brought, and so regaining strength to wait all the sooner on yourself. For I shall soon, as you doubtless know already, have work in hand which will compel me to make my visits fewer; and yet I shall not like to risk other lives by sending any of the household to wait on you in my stead."
"Alas! madam, I fear I have been but a troublesome and unprofitable, though not altogether, I do assure you, a thankless guest," the man answered, in a somewhat sad and deprecatory manner.
"Nay; but now you mistake me altogether," she answered earnestly. "You have been a most patient sufferer, and that trouble--which is altogether unavoidable in any sickness--has been, you may believe me, a pleasure rather than an uneasiness to me. I only meant to say that, though I shall still continue to visit you morning and evening, I shall not be able to come so often in the daytime as I have been used to do; for all matters in this sad affair of the transplantation having fallen into my hands, you may well imagine it is as much or more than one poor woman can well accomplish by her own unaided efforts."
"Would that I could aid you," he answered fervently--"would that I could comfort you! But, alas! in this matter of the transplantation, I can do naught, seeing that it is the Lord himself who hath girded on our swords, bidding us to smite and spare not. {183} Nevertheless, lady, I am not ungrateful, and in the long, sleepless nights of my weary malady I have wrestled for you in prayer, striving exceedingly and being much exercised on your account; nor gave I over until I had received the comfortable assurance that, as the Lord sent angels to Lot to deliver him out of Sodom, so he would some day make of me a shield and a defence, whereby you might be snatched from the woes that he is about to rain down on this land, because 'the cry of its idolatry is waxen great before his face,' and he hath sworn to destroy it."
"Well, well!" she answered a little impatiently, "I thank you for your good-will, at all events; but for the present we will discourse no further on this matter. God will one day judge between us, and by his fiat I am content to stand or fall, in all those matters of religion on which, unhappily, we differ. See, I have trimmed the lamp so that it will burn brightly until morning, and there is food and wine on this little table. I will put it close to the bed, so that when you need nourishment, you will have but to put forth your hand to take it. And now I must say good-night--to-morrow I will be with you by the early dawn."
Having thus done all that either charity or hospitality could ask at her hands, Mrs. Netterville retired from the room, sooner, probably, than she would have done if the soldier's last words had not grated on her ear, and roused more angry passions than she wished to yield to in her breast.
"He has a good heart, poor wretch," she thought, as she took her way back to the castle; "but strange and fearful is it to see how pride, in him, as in all his comrades, usurps the place of true humility and religion."
The sudden sound of a pistol going off disturbed her in the midst of her cogitations; and with a pang of indescribable fear and presentiment of evil at her heart, she stood still. It seemed to come from the grove of yew-trees round the church, and was not repeated. Having ascertained this fact, she walked rapidly forward in the direction of the sound, her mind in a perfect whirl of fear, and only able to shape itself into the one thought, pregnant of future evil, that, either by some of her own people, or by one of the English soldiers, a murder had been committed. Just as she entered the grove of yew-trees, she perceived something like the loose garb of a woman fluttering down the path before her, and then suddenly disappearing behind the tower of the little church. She did not dare to call out; but feeling certain that this person must either have fired the shot herself, or have seen it fired by some one else, she quickened her pace in order to overtake her. Twilight was already deepening among the yew-trees; the path, moreover, was overgrown with weeds and brambles, and as she ran with her eyes fixed on the spot where the figure had disappeared, she felt herself suddenly tripped up by some object lying right before her, and fell heavily against it. At the first touch of that unseen something, a sense of terror, such as animals are said to be conscious of in the presence of their own dead, seized upon her senses, and all the blood was curdling in her veins as slowly and with difficulty she removed herself from its contact. Gradually, as she recovered from the stunning effects of her fall, and her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom around her, the "thing" on the ground shaped itself into the form of a human being--but of a human being so still and motionless, that it seemed probable it was a corpse already. {184} Very reluctantly she put forth her hand to try if life were really extinct; but suddenly discovering that she was dabbling it in a pool of yet warm blood, she withdrew it with a shudder.
"My God! my God!" she moaned, "what enemy hath done this? Surely it is one of the soldiers from the castle, and they will accuse our people of the murder! Grant Heaven, indeed, that they are innocent! Would that Hamish were here to help me. Yet no! they would certainly in that case try to fix the guilt on him. I will go hence and let them discover it as they can. Yet what if I should meet them? I am all dabbled in his gore!"
With a new and sharp terror in her heart, as this thought took possession of it, she began hastily to rub her hands in the moss and dry leaves around her, in order to free them from the blood which clung to them; and she was still engaged in this rather equivocal occupation when a sudden stream of light was cast on her from behind, and, rising suddenly, she found herself face to face with the officer who had been left in command of the garrison of the castle.
Half-a-dozen of his men were at his back, and by the light of the lantern, which he carried, she read in their faces their conviction of her guilt. At a sign from their chief they surrounded her in awful silence, and he himself laid his hand heavily on her shoulder:
"Murderess!" he said, "thou art taken in thy sin!"
"I did it not," cried Mrs. Netterville, so utterly confounded by this terrible accusation that she hardly knew what she said. "So help me Heaven! I am innocent of this deed!"
"Innocent! sayest thou?" the officer answered firmly. "Innocent! thou with his blood red upon thy hands! Yea, and thy very garments clotted in his gore! If then thou art innocent, as thou wouldst have us to believe, say what wert thou doing in this lonely spot at an hour when none but the murderer or the wanton would care to be abroad?"
"I was returning from a visit to the soldier Jackson--a visit which, as thou knowest, Master Rippel, I pay him every evening at the hour of dusk; and I had well-nigh reached the castle, when hearing a shot in this direction, and fearing mischief either for my own people or for thine, I came hither if possible to prevent it."
"A likely story, truly!" replied the officer, who, unluckily for her, was one of the fiercest, if not the saintliest, of the band of warriors then domiciled at the castle. "Nay, woman, and for thine own sake hold thy peace, or out of thine own mouth thou shalt stand presently condemned. For tell me, my masters," he added, addressing the other men, "where will you find a woman, who, hearing a shot, and dreading mischief, would not have fled from the danger, instead of incontinently rushing, as she would have us to believe she did, into its very jaws?"
"Yet have I rushed into the jaws of danger more than once already within this fortnight, and that not for the sake of my own people but of thine; as none ought to know better than thou, Master Rippel, and thy comrades," Mrs. Netterville, now fairly put upon her mettle, retorted bravely.
"Nay, and that is naught but the very truth, though the father of lies (which is Beelzebub) himself had said it," one of the men here ventured to remark. "For surely, Captain Rippel, you cannot have forgotten that we should have had a soldier the less in the camp of Israel, if she had not nursed the good youth Jackson through this black business of the plague, when we, even we, men anointed and girded to the fight, did hesitate to go near him."
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"Ha! Dost thou also venture to defend her?" cried the officer angrily. "Nay, then, let that woman which is called Deborah be brought forward and confronted with the prisoner. Her testimony must decide between us."
One or two of the soldiers who had been lingering at a little distance in the dusky twilight now advanced, half pushing before them, half leading, the very woman who had addressed Nellie so impudently in the morning. She came forward with a strange mixture of eagerness and reluctance in her manner; willing enough, it might be, to bear false testimony against her neighbor, but very unwilling to be confronted with its object.
They placed her face to face with Mrs. Netterville, and the captain turned his lantern so that the light fell full on the features of the latter. They were cold and calm, and almost disdainful in their expression, now that she knew who was her accuser; and Deborah, spite of all her efforts to brazen out the interview, cowered beneath her glance of scorn.
"Nay, but look well upon her, Deborah," said the captain, seeing that her eyes fell beneath those of the woman she had accused. "Look well upon her, and say if this be not that Moabitish woman whom thou sawest, as thou wert lingering (for no good purpose, I do fear me greatly) in the shadow of the trees--whom thou sawest, say I, steal hither between light and darkness, and treacherously do to death our brother Tomkins, who, being--as methinks you revealed to me just now--wearied overmuch with prayer and holding forth, (he was, as I myself can testify, a man of most precious doctrine, and greatly favored in the gift of preaching,) had come hither to repose himself."
"Nay," said the woman, speaking in very tolerable English, an accomplishment she had picked up when in service in Dublin; "of that great weariness caused by too much prayer and preaching. Master Rippel, I said naught--my own impression being," she added, unable even before such an audience to repress the gibe, "that the slumberous inclinations of worthy Master Tomkins had been caused by a somewhat too ardent devotion lately tendered to the wine-cask."
"Peace, scoffer! peace!" cried the captain. "And if thou wouldst have thy blasphemy against the Lord and against his saints forgiven, in this world or the next, look once more on the face of the prisoner, and be not shamefaced or afraid, but say out boldly whether you can swear to her in a court of justice as being the person whom you espied just now in the act--yea, the very act of murder."
"I can," said the woman shortly, and avoiding the eye of Mrs. Netterville as she spoke.
"Thou canst?" the latter said in a tone of indignant astonishment. "And pray, if thou wert watching me so narrowly, why didst thou not endeavor to prevent me?--why not strike up my weapon?--why not cry out, at least, so as to rouse up the sleeping soldier?"
"I did what I could," the woman sullenly responded. "I sought out his comrades. It was their look-out, not mine, and to them accordingly I left it."
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"She speaks the truth, as we who so lately heard her tale can testify," the captain answered quickly. "You see, my men," he added, addressing the other soldiers, "Beelzebub is divided against himself, and the very children of his kingdom bear witness against each other. Surely the woman Netterville is guilty. Take her, therefore, some of you, a prisoner to the castle, while the rest prepare a decent burial for our murdered brother. I myself must speak apart with the witness Deborah, in order to put her testimony into a fitting shape to be laid before the court of my lords, the high commissioners of justice."