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James Stephens - "The Crock of Gold"

Joseph McCabe - "The Story of Evolution"

Oliver Optic - "Poor and Proud, or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn"

alight@rock.concert.net - "Renascence and Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay"

Mary Barton

E >> Elizabeth Gaskell >> Mary Barton




"My dears, he is dead! But I have sent for a doctor. I have done
all I could."

"When did he--when did they bring him home?" asked Sophy.

"Perhaps ten minutes ago. Before you rang for Parker."

"How did he die? Where did they find him? He looked so well. He
always seemed so strong. Oh! are you sure he is dead?"

She went towards the door. Nurse laid her hand on her arm.

"Miss Sophy, I have not told you all. Can you bear to hear it?
Remember, master is in the next room, and he knows nothing yet.
Come, you must help me to tell him. Now, be quiet, dear! It was no
common death he died!" She looked in her face as if trying to
convey her meaning by her eyes.

Sophy's lips moved, but nurse could hear no sound.

"He has been shot as he was coming home along Turner Street,
to-night."

Sophy went on with the motion of her lips, twitching them almost
convulsively.

"My dear, you must rouse yourself, and remember your father and
mother have yet to be told. Speak! Miss Sophy!"

But she could not; her whole face worked involuntarily. The nurse
left the room, and almost immediately brought back some sal-volatile
and water. Sophy drank it eagerly, and gave one or two deep gasps.
Then she spoke in a calm, unnatural voice.

"What do you want me to do, nurse? Go to Helen and poor Amy. See,
they want help."

"Poor creatures! we must let them alone for a bit. You must go to
master; that's what I want you to do, Miss Sophy. You must break it
to him, poor old gentleman! Come, he's asleep in the dining-room,
and the men are waiting to speak to him."

Sophy went mechanically to the dining-room door.

"Oh! I cannot go in. I cannot tell him. What must I say?"

"I'll come with you, Miss Sophy. Break it to him by degrees."

"I can't, nurse. My head throbs so, I shall be sure to say the
wrong thing."

However, she opened the door. There sat her father, the shaded
light of the candle-lamp falling upon, and softening his marked
features, while his snowy hair contrasted well with the deep crimson
morocco of the chair. The newspaper he had been reading had dropped
on the carpet by his side. He breathed regularly and deeply.

At that instant the words of Mrs. Hemans's song came full in Sophy's
mind--

"Ye know not what ye do,
That call the slumberer back
From the realms unseen by you,
To life's dim weary track."

But this life's track would be to the bereaved father something more
than dim and weary, hereafter.

"Papa," said she softly. He did not stir.

"Papa!" she exclaimed, somewhat louder.

He started up, half awake.

"Tea is ready, is it?" and he yawned.

"No! papa, but something very dreadful--very sad, has happened!"

He was gaping so loud that he did not catch the words she uttered,
and did not see the expression of her face.

"Master Henry has not come back," said nurse. Her voice, heard in
unusual speech to him, arrested his attention, and rubbing his eyes,
he looked at the servant.

"Harry! oh, no! he had to attend a meeting of the masters about
these cursed turn-outs. I don't expect him yet. What are you
looking at me so strangely for, Sophy?"

"O papa, Harry is come back," said she, bursting into tears.

"What do you mean?" said he, startled into an impatient
consciousness that something was wrong. "One of you says he is not
come home, and the other says he is. Now, that's nonsense! Tell me
at once what's the matter. Did he go on horseback to town? Is he
thrown? Speak, child, can't you?"

"No! he's not been thrown, papa," said Sophy sadly.

"But he's badly hurt," put in the nurse, desirous to be drawing his
anxiety to a point.

"Hurt? Where? How? Have you sent for a doctor?" said he, hastily
rising, as if to leave the room.

"Yes, papa, we've sent for a doctor--but I'm afraid---I believe it's
of no use."

He looked at her for a moment, and in her face he read the truth.
His son, his only son, was dead.

He sank back in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, and bowed
his head upon the table. The strong mahogany dining-table shook and
rattled under his agony.

Sophy went and put her arms round his bowed neck.

"Go! you are not Harry," said he; but the action roused him.

"Where is he? where is the"--said he, with his strong face set into
the lines of anguish, by two minutes of such intense woe.

"In the servants' hall," said nurse. "Two policemen and another man
brought him home. They would be glad to speak to you when you are
able, sir."

"I am now able," replied he. At first when he stood up he tottered.
But steadying himself, he walked, as firmly as a soldier on drill,
to the door. Then he turned back and poured out a glass of wine
from the decanter which yet remained on the table. His eye caught
the wine-glass which Harry had used but two or three hours before.
He sighed a long quivering sigh, and then mastering himself again,
he left the room.

"You had better go back to your sisters, Miss Sophy," said nurse.

Miss Carson went. She could not face death yet.

The nurse followed Mr. Carson to the servants' hall. There on their
dinner-table lay the poor dead body. The men who had brought it
were sitting near the fire, while several of the servants stood
round the table, gazing at the remains.

THE REMAINS!

One or two were crying; one or two were whispering; awed into a
strange stillness of voice and action by the presence of the dead.
When Mr. Carson came in they all drew back and looked at him with
the reverence due to sorrow.

He went forward and gazed long and fondly on the calm, dead face;
then he bent down and kissed the lips yet crimson with life. The
policemen had advanced, and stood ready to be questioned. But at
first the old man's mind could only take in the idea of death;
slowly, slowly came the conception of violence, of murder. "How did
he die?" he groaned forth.

The policemen looked at each other. Then one began, and stated that
having heard the report of a gun in Turner Street, he had turned
down that way (a lonely, unfrequented way Mr. Carson knew, but a
short cut to his garden door, of which Harry had a key); that as he
(the policeman) came nearer, he had heard footsteps as of a man
running away; but the evening was so dark (the moon not having yet
risen) that he could see no one twenty yards off. That he had even
been startled when close to the body by seeing it lying across the
path at his feet. That he had sprung his rattle; and when another
policeman came up, by the light of the lantern they had discovered
who it was that had been killed. That they believed him to be dead
when they first took him up, as he had never moved, spoken, or
breathed. That intelligence of the murder had been sent to the
superintendent, who would probably soon be here. That two or three
policemen were still about the place where the murder was committed,
seeking out for some trace of the murderer. Having said this, they
stopped speaking.

Mr. Carson had listened attentively, never taking his eyes off the
dead body. When they had ended, he said--

"Where was he shot?"

They lifted up some of the thick chestnut curls, and showed a blue
spot (you could hardly call it a hole, the flesh had closed so much
over it) in the left temple. A deadly aim! And yet it was so dark a
night!

"He must have been close upon him," said one policeman.

"And have had him between him and the sky," added the other.

There was a little commotion at the door of the room, and there
stood poor Mrs. Carson, the mother.

She had heard unusual noises in the house, and had sent down her
maid (much more a companion to her than her highly-educated
daughters) to discover what was going on. But the maid either
forgot, or dreaded, to return; and with nervous impatience Mrs.
Carson came down herself, and had traced the hum and buzz of voices
to the servants' hall.

Mr. Carson turned round. But he could not leave the dead for any
one living.

"Take her away, nurse. It is no sight for her. Tell Miss Sophy to
go to her mother." His eyes were again fixed on the dead face of
his son.

Presently Mrs. Carson's hysterical cries were heard all over the
house. Her husband shuddered at the outward expression of the agony
which was rending his heart.

Then the police superintendent came, and after him the doctor. The
latter went through all the forms of ascertaining death, without
uttering a word, and when at the conclusion of the operation of
opening a vein, from which no blood flowed, he shook his head, all
present understood the confirmation of their previous belief. The
superintendent asked to speak to Mr. Carson in private.

"It was just what I was going to request of you," answered he; so he
led the way into the dining-room, with the wine-glass still on the
table.

The door was carefully shut, and both sat down, each apparently
waiting for the other to begin.

At last Mr. Carson spoke.

"You probably have heard that I am a rich man."

The superintendent bowed in assent.

"Well, sir, half--nay, if necessary, the whole of my fortune I will
give to have the murderer brought to the gallows."

"Every exertion, you may be sure, sir, shall be used on our part;
but probably offering a handsome reward might accelerate the
discovery of the murderer. But what I wanted particularly to tell
you, sir, is that one of my men has already got some clue, and that
another (who accompanied me here) has within this quarter of an hour
found a gun in the field which the murderer crossed, and which he
probably threw away when pursued, as encumbering his flight. I have
not the smallest doubt of discovering the murderer."

"What do you call a handsome reward?" said Mr. Carson.

"Well, sir, three, or five hundred pounds is a munificent reward:
more than will probably be required as a temptation to any
accomplice."

"Make it a thousand," said Mr. Carson decisively. "It's the doing
of those damned turn-outs."

"I imagine not," said the superintendent. "Some days ago the man I
was naming to you before, reported to the inspector when he came on
his beat, that he had to separate your son from a young man, who by
his dress he believed to be employed in a foundry; that the man had
thrown Mr. Carson down, and seemed inclined to proceed to more
violence, when the policeman came up and interfered. Indeed, my man
wished to give him in charge for an assault, but Mr. Carson would
not allow that to be done."

"Just like him!--noble fellow!" murmured the father.

"But after your son had left, the man made use of some pretty strong
threats. And it's rather a curious coincidence that this scuffle
took place in the very same spot where the murder was committed; in
Turner Street."

There was some one knocking at the door of the room. It was Sophy,
who beckoned her father out, and then asked him, in an awestruck
whisper, to come upstairs and speak to her mother.

"She will not leave Harry, and talks so strangely. Indeed--indeed--
papa, I think she has lost her senses."

And the poor girl sobbed bitterly.

"Where is she?" asked Mr. Carson.

"In his room."

They went upstairs rapidly and silently. It was a large comfortable
bedroom; too large to be well lighted by the flaring, flickering
kitchen-candle which had been hastily snatched up, and now stood on
the dressing-table.

On the bed, surrounded by its heavy, pall-like green curtains, lay
the dead son. They had carried him up, and laid him down, as
tenderly as though they feared to waken him; and, indeed, it looked
more like sleep than death, so very calm and full of repose was the
face. You saw, too, the chiselled beauty of the features much more
perfectly than when the brilliant colouring of life had distracted
your attention. There was a peace about him which told that death
had come too instantaneously to give any previous pain.

In a chair, at the head of the bed, sat the mother--smiling. She
held one of the hands (rapidly stiffening, even in her warm grasp),
and gently stroked the back of it, with the endearing caress she had
used to all her children when young.

"I am glad you are come," said she, looking up at her husband, and
still smiling. "Harry is so full of fun, he always has something
new to amuse us with; and now he pretends he is asleep, and that we
can't waken him. Look! he is smiling now; he hears I have found him
out. Look!"

And, in truth, the lips, in the rest of death, did look as though
they wore a smile, and the waving light of the unsnuffed candle
almost made them seem to move.

"Look, Amy," said she to her youngest child, who knelt at her feet,
trying to soothe her, by kissing her garments.

"Oh, he was always a rogue! You remember, don't you, love? how full
of play he was as a baby; hiding his face under my arm, when you
wanted to play with him. Always a rogue, Harry!"

"We must get her away, sir," said nurse; "you know there is much to
be done before"--

"I understand, nurse." said the father, hastily interrupting her in
dread of the distinct words which would tell of the changes of
mortality.

"Come, love," said he to his wife. "I want you to come with me. I
want to speak to you downstairs."

"I'm coming," said she, rising; "perhaps, after all, nurse, he's
really tired, and would be glad to sleep. Don't let him get cold,
though,--he feels rather chilly," continued she, after she had bent
down, and kissed the pale lips.

Her husband put his arm around her waist, and they left the room.
Then the three sisters burst into unrestrained wailings. They were
startled into the reality of life and death. And yet in the midst
of shrieks and moans, of shivering and chattering of teeth, Sophy's
eye caught the calm beauty of the dead; so calm amidst such
violence, and she hushed her emotion.

"Come," said she to her sisters, "nurse wants us to go; and besides,
we ought to be with mamma. Papa told the man he was talking to,
when I went for him, to wait, and she must not be left."

Meanwhile, the superintendent had taken a candle, and was examining
the engravings that hung round the dining-room. It was so common to
him to be acquainted with crime, that he was far from feeling all
his interest absorbed in the present case of violence, although he
could not help having much anxiety to detect the murderer. He was
busy looking at the only oil-painting in the room (a youth of
eighteen or so, in a fancy dress), and conjecturing its identity
with the young man so mysteriously dead, when the door opened, and
Mr. Carson returned. Stern as he had looked before leaving the
room, he looked far sterner now. His face was hardened into
deep-purposed wrath.

"I beg your pardon, sir, for leaving you." The superintendent
bowed. They sat down, and spoke long together. One by one the
policemen were called in, and questioned.

All through the night there was bustle and commotion in the house.
Nobody thought of going to bed. It seemed strange to Sophy to hear
nurse summoned from her mother's side to supper, in the middle of
the night, and still stranger that she could go. The necessity of
eating and drinking seemed out of place in the house of death.

When night was passing into morning, the dining-room door opened,
and two persons' steps were heard along the hall. The
superintendent was leaving at last. Mr. Carson stood on the front-
door step, feeling the refreshment of the caller morning air, and
seeing the starlight fade away into dawn.

"You will not forget," said he. "I trust to you." The policeman
bowed.

"Spare no money. The only purpose for which I now value wealth is
to have the murderer arrested, and brought to justice. My hope in
life now is to see him sentenced to death. Offer any rewards. Name
a thousand pounds in the placards. Come to me at any hour, night or
day, if that be required. All I ask of you is, to get the murderer
hanged. Next week, if possible--to-day is Friday. Surely with the
clues you already possess, you can muster up evidence sufficient to
have him tried next week."

"He may easily request an adjournment of his trial, on the ground of
the shortness of the notice," said the superintendent.

"Oppose it, if possible. I will see that the first lawyers are
employed. I shall know no rest while he lives."

"Everything shall be done, sir."

"You will arrange with the coroner. Ten o'clock if convenient."

The superintendent took leave.

Mr. Carson stood on the step, dreading to shut out the light and
air, and return into the haunted, gloomy house.

"My son! my son!" he said at last. "But you shall be avenged, my
poor murdered boy."

Ay! to avenge his wrongs the murderer had singled out his victim,
and with one fell action had taken away the life that God had given.
To avenge his child's death, the old man lived on; with the single
purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his
vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge?

Are ye worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto?

Oh! Orestes, you would have made a very tolerable Christian of the
nineteenth century!



XIX. JEM WILSON ARRESTED ON SUSPICION,

"Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know,
Whether I suffered or I did,
For all seemed guilt, remorse, or woe."
--COLERIDGE.

I left Mary, on that same Thursday night which left its burden of
woe at Mr. Carson's threshold, haunted with depressing thoughts.
All through the night she tossed restlessly about, trying to get
quit of the ideas that harassed her, and longing for the light when
she could rise, and find some employment. But just as dawn began to
appear, she became more quiet, and fell into a sound heavy sleep,
which lasted till she was sure it was late in the morning, by the
full light that shone in.

She dressed hastily, and heard the neighbouring church clock strike
eight. It was far too late to do as she had planned (after
inquiring how Alice was, to return and tell Margaret), and she
accordingly went in to inform the latter of her change of purpose,
and the cause of it; but on entering the house she found Job sitting
alone, looking sad enough. She told him what she came for.

"Margaret, wench! why, she's been gone to Wilson's these two hours.
Ay! sure, you did say last night you would go; but she could na rest
in her bed, so was off betimes this morning."

Mary could do nothing but feel guilty of her long morning nap, and
hasten to follow Margaret's steps; for late as it was, she felt she
could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good
Alice Wilson was going on.

So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along
the street. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people
she had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time
her only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from
Miss Simmonds.

She went into the house at Jane Wilson's, her heart at the instant
giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face, at
the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do
assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving
as she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had
not been mingled with any thought of him.

Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so
painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round
table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and
there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly,
while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite.
And there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a night-cap or so,
which, by their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were
Alice's. But nothing--no one else.

Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her:
at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would
Mary like to see her?

Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends
under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no
wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish.

So Mary went upstairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the
suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible
than her usual voice.

"I mun be hastening home, but I'll come again to-night, time enough
to iron her cap; 'twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty
now she's ill, when she's been so rare and clean all her life long.
But she's sadly forsaken, poor thing! She'll not know you, Mary;
she knows none of us."

The room upstairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of
four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been
occupied by the twins in their brief lifetime. The smaller had been
Alice's bed since she had lived there; but with the natural
reverence to one "stricken of God and afflicted," she had been
installed, since her paralytic stroke the evening before, in the
larger and grander bed; while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken
rest on the little pallet.

Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected,
and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing.

The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into
silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face
since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her
sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with
her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a
restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to
a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a
low indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked
calm and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing
through her clouded mind.

"Listen!" said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the
muttered words more distinctly.

"What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th' last
time, and we've a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here's a
linnet's nest in this gorse-bush. Th' hen bird is on it. Look at
her bright eyes, she won't stir. Ay! we mun hurry home. Won't
mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we've got! Make
haste, Sally, maybe we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th'
cockleman's donkey turn up our way fra' Arnside."

Margaret touched Mary's hand, and the pressure in return told her
that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness
to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing:
she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and
bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of
her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as
many years slept in a grassy grave in the little churchyard beyond
Burton.

Alice's face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent.

"O Sally! I wish we'd told her. She thinks we were in church all
morning, and we've gone on deceiving her. If we'd told her at first
how it was--how sweet th' hawthorn smelt through the open church
door, and how we were on th' last bench in the aisle, and how it
were the first butterfly we'd seen this spring, and how it flew into
th' very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we'd told
her. I'll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say, 'Mother,
we were naughty last Sabbath.'"

She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered
cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood.
Surely many sins could not have darkened that innocent child-like
spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put
it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the
trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur.

"Thank you, mother."

Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed.

"Don't you think she's happy, Margaret?"

"Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of
her present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be
patient with her afore me, but I'd give aught I have to see her, and
see what she wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long
as Jane Wilson is alone; and I would fain be here all to-night,
but"--

"I'll come," said Mary decidedly.

"Mrs. Davenport said she'd come again, but she's hardworked all
day"--

"I'll come," repeated Mary.

"Do!" said Margaret, "and I'll be here till you come. Maybe, Jem
and you could take th' night between you, and Jane Wilson might get
a bit of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better
part of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this
morning, between two and three, Jem came home, and th' sound o' his
voice roused her in a minute."

"Where had he been till that time o' night?" asked Mary.

"Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him till
he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning, and
seemed sadly downcast. But you'll, maybe, manage to comfort him
to-night, Mary," said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope
glimmered in Mary's heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant,
of the occasion which would at last bring them together. Oh! happy
night! when would it come? Many hours had yet to pass.

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