The King's Highway Part 25

She made no reply, but went on: and taking one or two turns through the tortuous lanes in the neighbourhood, arrived at a spot where a small obelisk, of no very graceful form or great dimensions, planted in the middle of the road, marked the boundary of four distinct parishes. She paused there for a moment, and leaned upon the landmark, as if from fatigue, weakness, or agitation. The light was now dim, but it was not yet dark; and in a moment or two she saw a figure appear suddenly in the lane before her.

It advanced rapidly towards her, and she pressed her hand tight upon her heart. One might have heard it throbbing. The gentleman came on with a pace like lightning, and held out his hand towards her. She gave him her hand, but turned away her head; and after gazing on her for a moment, he drew her gently to his bosom, saying, "One kiss at least, my Caroline."

She did not refuse it, and he pressed her warmly to his heart. There was a moment's silence, and then his arms relaxed their hold, and he exclaimed, "Oh Heaven!"

He then drew her arm within his, and walked on with her.

"Oh, Caroline," he said at length, "would that you did know how I love you!"

"If I did know, Sherbrooke," she replied, "that you really did love me, it would make me far, far happier than I am. But how can I believe it, Sherbrooke? how can I believe it?"

"Is it," he demanded, "is it because I have asked you to conceal our marriage a little longer? Is it for that reason that you doubt my love? Is it for that reason that you have come over to England, risking all and everything, affecting my fate in ways that you have no idea of? Is it for this, Caroline?"

There was a pause for several minutes, and at length she answered,--

"Not entirely. There may have been many reasons, Sherbrooke, joined therewith. There were many that I stated in my letters to you. There were others that you might have imagined. Was it unnatural that I should wish to see my husband? Was it unnatural I should believe that he would be glad to see me? As I told you, the circ.u.mstances were changed; my father was dead; I had none to protect me in France; the Lady Helen was coming to England. When she was gone, I was left quite alone. But oh, Sherbrooke, tell me, tell me, what cause have I had to believe that you love me? Have you not neglected me? Have you not forgotten me? Have you not----"

"Never, never, Caroline!" he cried, vehemently--"in my wildest follies, in my rashest acts, I have thought of you and loved you. I have remembered you with affection, and with grief, and with tenderness. Memory, sad memory, has come upon me in the midst of the maddest efforts for gaiety, and cast me into a fit of deep, anxious, sorrowful, repentant, remorseful thought, which I could not shake off: it seemed as if some vengeful spirit seized upon me for its prey, and dinned in my ears the name of love and Caroline, till my heart was nearly broken."

"And the moment after," she said, "what was it, Sherbrooke, that you did? Did you sit down and write to Caroline, to her who was giving every thought to you? or did you fly to the side of some gay coquette, to dissipate such painful thoughts in her society? or did you fly to worse, Sherbrooke?"

He was silent. "Sherbrooke," she added, after a time, "I wish not to reproach you. All I wish is to justify myself, and the firm unchangeable resolution which I have been obliged to take. I have always tried to close my ears against everything that might make me think less highly of him I love. But tales would reach me--tales most painful to hear; and at length I was told that you were absolutely on the eve of wedding another."

"They told you false!" exclaimed Lord Sherbrooke, wildly and vehemently--"whoever said so, lied. I have been culpable, and am culpable, Caroline; but not to that extent. I never dreamed of wedding her. Did I not know it could not be? But you speak of your resolutions. Let me know what they are at once! To declare all, I suppose! Publicly to produce the proofs of our marriage! To announce to my father, already exasperated against me, that in this, too, I have offended him! To call down, even upon your own head, the revenge of a man who has never yet, in life, gone without it! To tell all--all, in short?"

"No, no, no, Sherbrooke!" she said--"I am going to do none of all these things. Angry and thwarted, you do not do that justice to your wife which you ought. You speak, Sherbrooke, as if you did not know me. I will do none of these things. You do not choose to acknowledge me as your wife. You are angry at my having come to England. I will not announce our marriage till the last moment. I will not publish it till my dying hour, unless I be driven to it by some terrible circ.u.mstance. I will return to France. I will live as the widow of a man that I have loved. But I will never see you more, Sherbrooke; I will never hear from you more; I will never write to you more; till you come openly and straightforwardly to claim me as your wife in the face of all the world. Whenever you declare me to be your wife, I will do all the duties of a wife: I will be obedient to your will, not alone from duty but from love; but till you do acknowledge me as your wife, you can plead no t.i.tle to such submission."

"Ah, Caroline," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "you speak well and wisely, but coldly too. You can easily resign the man that you once loved. It costs you but little to give him over to his own course; to afford him no solace, no consolation, no advice; to deprive him of that communication, which, distant as it was, might have saved him from many an error. It costs you nothing to p.r.o.nounce such words as you have spoken, and to sever our fate for ever."

"It is you that sever it," she replied, in a sad and reproachful tone. "Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, you do me wrong--you know you do me wrong--Oh, how great wrong! Do you think I have shed no tears? Do you think my heart has not been wrung? Do you think my hours have not pa.s.sed in anguish, my days in sadness, and my nights in weeping? Oh, Sherbrooke, since you left me, what has been my fate? To watch for some weeks the death-bed of a father, from whose mind the light had already departed; to sorrow over his tomb; to watch the long days for the coming of my husband--of the husband whom all had doubted, all had condemned, but my own weak heart, whose vows of amendment I had believed, to whose entreaties I had yielded, even to that rashest of all acts, a secret marriage; to find him delay his coming from day to day, and to see the sun that rose upon me in solitary sadness go down in grief; to lose the hope that cheered me; to look for his letters as the next boon; to read them and to weep over them; to remain in exile, not only from my native land, but also from him to whom I had given every feeling of my heart, to whom I had yielded all that a virtuous woman can yield; to remain in a strange court, to which I had no longer any tie, in which I had no longer any protector; and every time I heard his name mentioned, to hear it connected with some tale of scandal, or stigmatized for some new act of vice; and worse, worse than all, Sherbrooke, to be sought, idly sought, by men that I despised, or hated, or was indifferent to, and forbade to say the words which would have ended their pursuit at once, 'I am already a wife.' Sherbrooke, you have given me months and months of misery already. I weep not now, even with the thought of parting from you for ever; but it is, I believe, that the fountain of my tears is dried up and exhausted. Oh, Sherbrooke, when first I knew you, who was so blithe and joyous as myself? and now, what have you made me?"

He was much moved, and was about to speak; but she held up her hand beseechingly, and said, "Let me go on--let me go on. You said it costs me little to act as I proposed to act. Think, Sherbrooke, think what it does really cost me. Even were I all selfishness, how bitter is the part that I have a.s.signed myself to play! To pa.s.s my time in solitude, without the pleasures of youth and gaiety; debarring myself from all the advantages of an unmarried woman, yet without the name, the blessings, the station, the dignity, of a wife; voluntarily depriving myself of every sort of consolation, relinquis.h.i.+ng even hope. But if I am not altogether selfish, Sherbrooke--and you have no cause to say I am so--if, as you know too well, there is deep, and permanent, and pure and true affection for you at the bottom of my heart, judge what the after-hours of life will be, judge what a long dreary lapse lies before me, between the present instant and the grave."

Sherbrooke was moved, and again and again he a.s.sured her that he loved her more than any other being upon earth; and the conversation continued for nearly half an hour longer. He begged her to stay with him in England, still concealing their marriage; he pressed her in every way to break her resolution; he urged her, if it were but for one week, to remain with him, in order to see whether he could not make arrangements to render their marriage public. But she remembered her resolution, and held to it firmly, and even rejected that last proposal, fearing consequences equally dangerous to herself and to him. Opposition began to make him angry; he entered not into her reasons; he saw not the strength of her motives; he spoke some harsh and unkind words, which caused her to weep, and then again he was grieved at having pained her, and kissed the tears away, and urged and argued again. Still she remained firm, however, and again he became irritated.

At the end of half an hour, both Caroline and her husband heard the sound of feet approaching them on both sides; and though it seemed that the people who were coming from the direction of Plessis's house walked lightly and with caution, yet there were evidently many of them, and Caroline became alarmed for her husband.

"The people are coming from the house, Sherbrooke," she cried--"they must not, oh, they must not find you here!"

"Why not?" he demanded, sharply.

"Oh, because they are a dangerous and a desperate set," she said--"bent, I am sure, from what I have heard, upon b.l.o.o.d.y and terrible schemes. Me they will let pa.s.s, but I fear for you--the very name of your father would be sufficient to destroy you, with them. We must part, indeed we must part!"

"And can you, Caroline," he demanded, still lingering, but speaking in a bitter and irritated tone, angry alike with himself, and her, and with the interruption--"can you hold to your cold and cruel resolution, now?"

"I can, I must, Sherbrooke," she replied,--"nothing shall shake me."

"Well, then, be it so!" he answered sharply; and turning away, walked rapidly up the lane.

Caroline stood, for a single instant, on the spot where he left her; but then all the feelings with which she had struggled during the whole of that painful conversation with her husband, seemed to break loose upon her at once, and over-power her. Her head grew giddy, a weary faintness seemed to come over her heart, and she sank, unconscious, on the ground.

The next moment six or seven men came quickly up.

"Here's a woman murdered!" cried one--"and the fellow that did it is off up the lane."

A few hasty exclamations of surprise and pity followed, and then another man exclaimed, in a hasty and impatient tone, "Take her up in your arms, Jim, and bring her along. Perhaps we may find this Messenger the boy talked of, and the murderer together; but let us make haste, or we shall lose both."

"Mind," said another, speaking almost at the same time, "don't knock the Messenger's brains out. We will just take and plant him in the marsh, tie his arms, and put him up to the arm-pits. The boys will find him there, when they come to drive back the cattle.--The lady don't seem quite dead, I think."

"Bring her along! bring her along!" cried another voice--"we shall miss all, if you are so slow;" and thus speaking, the leader of the party quickened his pace, while the others, having raised the lady from the ground, bore her onward towards the end of the lane.

CHAPTER XXIV.

We have said that Wilton Brown paused and gazed through the mist at the figure of a man advancing towards him, and to the reader it need not be told who the person was that thus came forward. To Wilton, however, the conviction was brought more slowly; for though he had heard the sound of a familiar voice, yet it seemed so improbable that voice should be the voice of Lord Sherbrooke, that the idea never struck him, till the figure became so distinct as not to leave a doubt.

"Good G.o.d, Sherbrooke!" he exclaimed, advancing towards him at length--"can it be you?"

"And I may well ask, Wilton, if it be you," said Lord Sherbrooke, in a tone so sharp and angry, so unlike his usual voice and manner of speaking, that Wilton drew back astonished, imagining that he had given his friend some unknown offence. But Lord Sherbrooke grasped his arm, exclaiming, "Hark! There they are! They are close upon us, Wilton! I have fallen in with a nest of Jacobites, I fancy, ready for an outbreak, and they are after me. Have you any arms?"

"Here are plenty of pistols, my lord," said the Messenger, who knew him.

"Ah, Arden, is that you?" he exclaimed. "Give me a pistol!" and he took one from the Messenger's hand. "Here are three of us now, Wilton," he exclaimed, with a laugh, "and one of us a Messenger: enough surely for any dozen Jacobites in England."

There was something wild, hasty, and strange in Lord Sherbrooke's manner, which startled and alarmed Wilton a good deal.

"For Heaven's sake, Sherbrooke," he said, "do nothing rashly. Let us see who they are before you act."

"Oh, I will do nothing rash," replied Sherbrooke. "But here they come! just like Jacobites, gabbling at every step. Who goes there, my masters?" he exclaimed, at the same moment. "Don't advance, don't advance! We are armed! The first man that advances, I shoot upon the spot!"

"Those are the men! those are the men!" cried a loud voice from the other party, who were now seen coming up in a ma.s.s. "Rush upon them!

Rush upon them, and tie the Messenger!"

"Oh, oh!" cried Arden. "They have found me out, have they! Stand by me, my lord! Stand by me, Mr. Brown! They are rus.h.i.+ng on!"

"Then here's for the midst of them!" cried Lord Sherbrooke; and instantly levelling his pistol, he fired, though Wilton was in the very act of holding forth his hand to stop him.

The moment the fatal flash had taken place, there was a reel back amongst the advancing party, though they were at several yards'

distance when the pistol was fired. A confusion, a gathering together, a murmur, succeeded; and while Lord Sherbrooke was in the very act of exclaiming, "Give me another pistol, Arden!" there was heard, from amongst the party who had been approaching, a loud voice, exclaiming, "By, he has shot the lady!--and she was only fainting, after all. See how the blood flows!"

The words were perfectly distinct. Lord Sherbrooke's hand, which had just seized the other pistol that the Messenger had held out to him, suddenly let it drop upon the ground. It was not possible to see the expression of his face fully, for his head was turned away; but Wilton felt him grasp his arm, as if for support, trembling in every limb.

"Good G.o.d! What have you done, Sherbrooke?" exclaimed his friend.

"I have killed her! I have killed her!" cried Lord Sherbrooke, gasping for breath--"I have killed the dear unfortunate girl!" and letting go Wilton's arm, he rushed forward at once into the midst of the other party, exclaiming, "Stand back! Let me forward! She is my wife! Stand out of my way! How, in the name of Heaven, did she--"

He left off, without concluding; and n.o.body answered. But the tone of bitter grief and agony in which Lord Sherbrooke spoke was not to be mistaken: there was in it the overpowering energy of pa.s.sionate grief; and everybody made way for him. In a moment he bad s.n.a.t.c.hed the form of the unhappy lady from the man who held her in his arms, and supporting her himself, partly on his knee, partly on his bosom, he kissed her again and again vehemently, eagerly, we may almost say frantically, exclaiming, "And I have killed thee, my Caroline! I have killed thee, my beloved, my wife, my own dear wife! I have killed thee, n.o.ble, and true, and kind! Oh, open your eyes, dear one, open your eyes and gaze upon me for a minute! She is living, she is living!" he added wildly--"she does open her eyes!--Quick, some one call a surgeon!--A hundred guineas to the first who brings me a surgeon!--G.o.d of Heaven! how has this happened?--Oh yes, she is living, she is reviving!--Wilton, for pity's sake, for mercy's sake, help me!"