Susanna Moodie - Mark Hurdlestone

S >> Susanna Moodie >> Mark Hurdlestone

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

"And the mother," sighed Elinor.

"Well if He who sends is pleased to take away, He will find me perfectly
resigned to His will. You need not weep, madam. If my conduct appears
unnatural, let me tell you that I consider those human beings alone
fortunate who perish in their infancy. They are in no fear of coming to
the gallows. They are saved from the threatened torments of hell!"

Elinor shrank from the wild flash of his keen dark eyes, and drew back
with an involuntary shudder. "Happy had it been for me if I had died an
infant on my mother's breast."

"Aye, if you had never seen the light. You were born to be the bane of
my house. But since you have confided to me this precious secret, let me
ask you what you think will be the probable expense of your
confinement?"

"I really cannot tell. I must have a doctor--a nurse--and some few
necessaries for the poor babe. I think, with great economy, ten pounds
would be enough."

"Ten pounds!"

"It may cost more, certainly not less."

"You will never get that sum from me."

"But, Marcus, what am I to do?"

"The best way you can."

"You would not have your wife solicit charity?"

"An excellent thought. Ha! ha! you would make a first-rate beggar, with
that pale sad face of yours. But, no, madam, you shall not beg. Poor as
I am, I will find means to support both you and the child. But, mark
me--it must not resemble Algernon."

"How is that possible? I have not seen Algernon for eighteen years."

"But he is ever in your thoughts. Let me not trace this adultery of the
heart in the features of my child."

"But you are like Algernon. Not a striking likeness, but still you might
be known for brothers."

"So, you are trying to find excuses in case of the worst. But, I again
repeat to you, that I will not own the boy if he is like Algernon."

This whim of the miser's was a new cause of terror to Elinor; from that
moment an indescribable dread lest the child should be like Algernon
took possession of her breast. She perceived that her husband already
calculated with selfish horror the expense of the unborn infant's food
and raiment; and she began to entertain some not unreasonable fears lest
the young child, if it should survive its birth, would be starved to
death, as Mark barely supplied his household with the common necessaries
of life; and, though Elinor bore the system of starvation with the
indifference which springs from a long and hopeless continuation of
suffering, the parish girl was loud in her complaints, and she was
constantly annoyed with her discontented murmurings, without having it
in her power to silence them in the only effective way.

The Squire told Ruth, that she consumed more food at one meal than would
support him and her mistress for a week; and he thought that what was
enough for them might satisfy a cormorant like her. But the poor girl
could not measure the cravings of her healthy appetite by the scanty
wants of a heart-broken invalid and a miser. Her hunger remained
unappeased, and she continued to complain.

At this period Mark Hurdlestone was attacked, for the first time in his
life, with a dangerous illness. Elinor nursed him with the greatest
care, and prescribed for him as well as she could; for he would not
suffer a doctor to enter the house. But finding that the disorder did
not yield to her remedies, but rather that he grew daily worse, she
privately sent for the doctor. When he arrived, Mr. Hurdlestone ordered
him out of his room, and nearly exhausted what little strength he still
possessed, in accusing Elinor of entering into a conspiracy with Mr.
Moore to kill him, and, as the doctor happened to be a widower, to marry
him after his death, and share the spoils between them.

"Your husband, madam, is mad--as mad as a March hare," said Mr. Moore,
as he descended the stairs. "He is, however, in a very dangerous state,
it is doubtful if he ever recovers."

"And what can be done for him?"

"Nothing in his present humor without you have him treated as a maniac,
which, if I were in your case and in your situation, I most certainly
would do."

"Oh, no, no! there is something dreadful in such a charge coming from a
wife, though he often appears to me scarcely accountable for his
actions; but what can I give him to allay this dreadful fever?"

"I will write you a prescription." This the doctor did on the back of a
letter with his pencil, for Elinor could not furnish him with a scrap of
paper.

"You must send this to the apothecary. He will make it up."

"What will it cost?"

The doctor smiled. "A mere trifle; perhaps three shillings."

"I have not had such a sum in my possession for the last three years. He
will die before he will give it to me."

"Mad, mad, mad," said the doctor, shaking his head. "Well, my dear
lady, if he will not give it to save his worthless life, you must steal
it from him. If you fail, why let Nature take her course. His death
would certainly be your gain."

Returning to the sick room, she found the patient in a better temper,
evidently highly gratified at having expelled the doctor. Elinor thought
this a good opportunity to urge her request for a small sum of money to
procure medicines and other necessaries; but on this subject she found
him inexorable.

"Give you money to buy poison!" he exclaimed. "Do you take me for a
fool, or mad?"

"You are very ill, Marcus; you will die, without you follow Dr. Moore's
advice."

"Don't flatter yourselves. I don't mean to die to please you. There is a
great deal of vitality in me yet. Don't say another word. I will take
nothing but cold water; I feel better already."

"Pray God that you may be right," said Elinor. But after this fit of
rage, he fell into a stupor, and before night he was considerably worse.
His unfortunate wife, worn down with watching and want of food and rest,
now determined to have a regular search for the key of his strongbox,
that she might procure him the medicines prescribed by the doctor, and
purchase oatmeal and bread for the use of the parish girl and herself.

She carefully examined his pockets, his writing-desk, and bureau, but to
no purpose--looking carefully into every drawer and chest that had not
been sold by public auction or private contract. Not a corner of the
chamber was left unexplored--not a closet or shelf escaped her strict
examination, until, giving up the search as perfectly hopeless, she
resumed her station at his bed-side, to watch through the long winter
night--without a fire, and by the wan gleam that a miserable rush-light
shed through the spacious and lofty room--the restless slumbers of the
miser. She was ill, out of spirits, fatigued with her fruitless
exertion, and deeply disappointed at her want of success.

The solitary light threw a ghastly livid hue on the strongly-marked
features of the sleeper, rendered sharp and haggard by disease and his
penurious habits; she could just distinguish through the gloom the
spectre-like form of the invalid, and the long bony attenuated hands
which grasped, from time to time, the curtains and bedclothes, as he
tossed from side to side in his feverish unrest. Elinor continued to
watch the dark and perturbed countenance of the sleeper, until he became
an object of fear, and she fancied that it was some demon who had for a
time usurped the human shape, and not the brother of Algernon--the man
whom she had voluntarily attended to the altar, and in the presence of
Almighty God had sworn to love, honor, and obey, and to cherish in
sickness and in health.

A crushing sense of all the deception that had been practiced upon her,
of her past wrongs and present misery, made her heart die within her,
and her whole soul overflow with bitterness. She wrung her hands, and
smote her breast in an agony of despair; but in that dark hour no tear
relieved her burning brain, or moistened her eyes. She had once been
under the dominion of insanity; she felt that her reason in that moment
hung upon a thread; that, if she pursued much longer her present
thoughts, they would drive her mad; that, if she continued to gaze much
longer on the face of her husband, she would be tempted to plunge a
knife, which lay on the table near her, into his breast. With a
desperate effort she drew her eyes from the sleeper, and turned from the
bed. Her gaze fell upon a large full-length picture in oils, which hung
opposite. It was the portrait of one of Mark's ancestors, a young man
who had fallen in his first battle, on the memorable field of Flodden.
It bore a strong resemblance to Algernon, and Elinor prized it on that
account, and would sit for hours with her head resting upon her hand,
and her eyes riveted on this picture. This night it seemed to regard her
with a sad and mournful aspect; and the large blue eyes appeared to
return her fixed gaze with the sorrowful earnestness of life.

"My head is strangely confused," she murmured, half aloud. "Into what
new extravagance will my treacherous fancy hurry me to-night? Ah me!
physical wants and mental suffering, added to this long watching, will
turn my brain."

She buried her face in her hands, and endeavored to shut out the
grotesque and phantom-like forms that seemed to dance before her. A
deathlike stillness reigned through the house, the silence alone broken
by the ticking of the great dial at the head of the staircase. There is
something inexpressibly awful in the ticking of a clock, when heard at
midnight by the lonely and anxious watcher beside the bed of death. It
is the voice of time marking its slow but certain progress towards
eternity, and warning us in solemn tones that it will soon cease to
number the hours for the sufferer for ever. Elinor trembled as she
listened to the low monotonous measured sounds; and she felt at that
moment a presentiment that her own weary pilgrimage on earth was drawing
to a close.

"Oh, Algernon!" she thought; "it may be a crime, but I sometimes think
that if I could see you once more--only once more--I could forget all
my wrongs and sufferings, and die in peace."

The unuttered thought was scarcely formed, when a slight rustling noise
shook the curtains of the bed, and the next moment a tall figure in
white glided across the room. It drew nearer, and Elinor, in spite of
the wish she had just dared to whisper to herself, struggled with the
vision, as a sleeper does with the night-mare, when the suffocating
grasp of the fiend is upon his throat. Her presence of mind forsook her,
and, with a shriek of uncontrollable terror, she flung herself across
the bed, and endeavored to awaken her husband. The place he had occupied
a few minutes before was vacant; and, raising her fear-stricken head,
she perceived, with feelings scarcely less allied to fear, that the
figure she had mistaken for the ghost of Algernon was the corporeal form
of the miser.

He was asleep, but his mind appeared to be actively employed. He drew
near the table with a cautious step, and took from beneath a broad
leathern belt, which he always wore next his skin, a small key. Elinor
sat up on the bed, and watched his movements with intense interest. He
next took up the candle, and glided out of the room. Slipping off her
shoes she followed him with noiseless steps. He descended the great
staircase, and suddenly stopped in the centre of the entrance hall. Here
he put down the light on the last step of the broad oak stairs, and
proceeded to remove one of the stone flags that formed the pavement of
the hall. With some difficulty he accomplished his task; then kneeling
down, and holding the light over the chasm, he said in hollow and
unearthly tones that echoed mournfully through the empty building:

"Look! here is money; my father's savings and my own. Will this save my
soul?"

Elinor leaned over the sordid wretch, and discovered with no small
astonishment that the aperture contained a great quantity of gold and
silver coins; and the most valuable articles of the family plate and
jewels.

"Unhappy man!" she mentally cried; "dost thou imagine that these
glittering heaps of metal will purchase the redemption of a soul like
thine, or avert the certainty of future punishment?--for never was the
parable of the servant who buried his talent in the dust more fully
exemplified than in thee."

"What, not enough?" growled forth the miser. "By heavens! thou hast a
human conscience. But wait patiently, and I will show you more--aye,
more--my brother's portion, and my own. Ha, ha! I tricked him there. The
old man's heart failed him at the last. He was afraid of you. Yes, yes,
he was afraid of the devil! It was I formed the plan. It was I guided
the dead hand. Shall I burn for that?"

Then, as if suddenly struck with a violent pain, he shrieked out, "Ah,
ah! my brain is cloven with a bolt of fire. I cannot bear this! Algernon
mocks my agonies--laughs at my cries--and tells me that he has a fair
wife and plenty of gold, in spite of my malice. How did he get it? Did
he rob me?"

Elinor shrunk back aghast from this wild burst of delirium; and the
miser, rising from his knees, began re-ascending the stairs. This task
he performed with difficulty, and often reeled forward with extreme pain
and weakness. After traversing several empty chambers, he entered what
had once been the state apartment, and stooping down, he drew from
beneath the faded furniture of the bed a strong mahogany brass-bound
chest, which he cautiously opened, and displayed to his wondering
companion a richer store of wealth than that on which she had so lately
gazed.

"How! not satisfied yet!" he cried in the same harsh tones, "then may I
perish to all eternity if I give you one fraction more."

As he was about to close the chest, Elinor, who knew that without a
necessary supply of money both her unborn infant and its avaricious
father would perish for want, slid her hand into the box, and dextrously
abstracted some of the broad gold pieces it contained. The coins, in
coming in contact with each other, emitted a slight ringing sound, which
arrested, trifling as it was, the ear of the sleeper.

"What! fingering the gold already?" he exclaimed, hastily slapping down
the lid of the strong box. "Could you not wait till I am dead?"

Then staggering back to his apartment, he was soon awake, and raving
under a fresh paroxysm of the fever. In his delirium he fancied himself
confined to the dreary gulf of eternal woe, and from this place of
torment he imagined that his brother could alone release him, and he
proffered to him, while under the influence of that strong agony, all
his hidden treasures if he would but intercede with Christ to save his
soul.

These visions of his diseased brain were so frequent and appalling, and
the near approach of death so dreadful to the guilty and despairing
wretch, that they produced at last a strong desire to see his brother,
that he might ask his forgiveness, and make some restitution of his
property to him before he died.

"Elinor," he said, "I must see Algernon. I cannot die until I have seen
him. But mark me, Elinor, you must not be present at our conference. You
must not see him."

With quivering lips, and a face paler than usual, his wife promised
obedience, and Grenard Pike was despatched to Norgood Hall to make known
to Algernon Hurdlestone his dying brother's request, and to call in,
once more, the aid of the village doctor.

As Elinor watched the grim messenger depart, she pressed her hands
tightly over her breast to hide from the quick eye of the miser the
violent agitation that convulsed her frame, as the recollection of
former days flashed upon her too retentive memory.

"Surely, surely," she thought, "he will never come. He has been too
deeply injured to attend to a verbal summons from his unnatural
brother."

Although strongly impressed that this would be the case, the desire of
once more beholding the love of her youth, though forbidden to speak to
him, or even to hear the sound of his voice, produced a state of
feverish excitement in her mind which kept alive her fears, without
totally annihilating hope.

The misty, grey dawn was slowly breaking along the distant hills, when
Grenard Pike, mounted upon a cart-horse which he had borrowed for the
occasion, leisurely paced down the broad avenue of oaks that led through
the park to the high road. Methodical in all his movements, though life
and death depended upon his journey, for no earthly inducement but a
handsome donation in money would Grenard Pike have condescended to
quicken his pace. This Elinor had it not in her power to bestow; and she
calculated with impatience the many hours which must elapse before such
a tardy messenger could reach Norgood Hall. Noon was the earliest period
within the range of possibility; yet the sound of the horse's hoofs,
striking against the frosty ground, still vibrated upon her ear when she
took her station at the chamber window, to watch for the arrival of the
man whose image a separation of nearly twenty years had not been able to
obliterate from her heart. Such is the weakness of human nature, that
we suffer imagination to outspeed time, and compress into one little
moment the hopes, the fears, the anticipations, and the events of years;
but when the spoiler again overtakes us, we look back, and, forgetful of
our former impatience to accelerate his pace, we are astonished at the
rapidity of his flight.

Elinor thought that the long day would never come to a close; yet it was
as dark and as short as a bleak, gloomy day in November could be.
Evening at length came, but brought no Algernon. Mr. Moore had paid his
visit, and was gone. He expected nothing less than the death of his
patient, after giving his consent to such an extraordinary event; and he
had even condescended to take a draught and some pills from the doctor's
hands. It is true that the sight of him, and the effects of the nauseous
medicines he had administered, had put the miser into a fever of
ill-temper; and he sullenly watched his wife, as she lingered hour after
hour at the window, till, in no very gentle accents, he called her to
his bed-side.

At that moment Elinor fancied that she heard the sound of approaching
wheels, and she strained her eyes to discern, through the deepening
gloom, some object that might realize her hopes. "No," she sighed, "it
was but the wind raving through the leafless oaks--the ticking of the
old dial--the throbbing of my own heart. He will not--he cannot come!"

"Woman! what ails you?" cried the invalid. "Reach me the drink."

Elinor mechanically obeyed; but her head was turned the other way, and
her eyes still fixed upon the window. A light flashed along the dark
avenue, now lost, and now again revealed through the trees. The cup fell
from her nerveless grasp, and faintly articulating, "Yes--'tis he!" she
sank senseless across the foot of the bed, as a carriage and four drove
rapidly into the court-yard.

The miser, with difficulty, reached the bell-rope that was suspended
from the bed's head, and, after ringing violently for some minutes, the
unusual summons was answered by the appearance of Ruth, who, thrusting
her brown; curly head in at the door, said, in breathless haste:

"The company's come, ma'arm! Such a grand coach! Four beautiful hosses,
and two real gemmen in black a' standing behind--and two on hossback a'
riding afore. What are we to do for supper? Doubtless they maun be
mortal hungry arter their long ride this cold night, and will 'spect
summat to eat, and we have not a morsel of food in the house fit to set
afore a cat."

"Pshaw!" muttered the sick man. "Silence your senseless prate! They will
neither eat nor drink here. Tell the coachman that there are excellent
accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses. But
first see to your mistress--she is in a swoon. Carry her into the next
room. And, mark me, Ruth--lock the door, and bring me the key."

The girl obeyed the first part of the miser's orders, but was too eager
to catch another sight of the grand carriage, and the real gentlemen
behind it, to remember the latter part of his injunction.

CHAPTER V.

Is this the man I loved, to whom I gave
The deep devotion of my early youth?--S.M.

Algernon Hurdlestone in his forty-second, and Algernon Hurdlestone in
his twenty-fourth year, were very different men. In mind, person, and
manners, the greatest dissimilarity existed between them. The tall
graceful figure for which he had once been so much admired, a life of
indolence, and the pleasures of the table, had rendered far too
corpulent for manly beauty. His features were still good, and there was
an air of fashion about him which bespoke the man of the world and the
gentleman; but he was no longer handsome or interesting. An expression
of careless good-humor, in spite of the deep mourning he wore for the
recent death of his wife, pervaded his countenance; and he seemed
determined to repay Fortune for the many ill turns he had received from
her in his youth, by enjoying, to their full extent, the good things
that she had latterly showered upon him.

He had been a kind manageable husband to a woman whom he had married
more for convenience than affection; and was a fatally indulgent father
to the only son, the sole survivor of a large family that he had
consigned to the tomb during the engaging period of infancy. Godfrey, a
beautiful little boy of two years old, was his youngest and his best
beloved, on whom he lavished the concentrated affections of his warm and
generous heart.

Since his marriage with the rich and beautiful Miss Maitland, he had
scarcely given Elinor Wildegrave a second thought. He had loved her
passionately, as the portionless orphan of the unfortunate Captain
Wildegrave; but he could not regard with affection or esteem the wife of
the rich Mark Hurdlestone--the man from whom he had received so many
injuries. How she could have condescended to share his splendid misery,
was a question which filled his mind with too many painful and
disgusting images to answer. When he received his brother's hasty
message, entreating him to come and make up their old quarrel before he
died, he obeyed the extraordinary summons with his usual kindness of
heart, without reflecting on the pain that such a meeting might
occasion, when he beheld again the object of his early affections as the
wife of his unnatural brother.

When he crossed the well-known threshold, and his shadow once more
darkened his father's hall, those feelings which had been deadened by
his long intercourse with the world resumed their old sway, and he
paused, and looked around the dilipidated mansion with eyes dimmed with
regretful tears.

"And it was to become the mistress of such a home as this, that Elinor
Wildegrave--my beautiful Elinor--sold herself to such a man as Mark
Hurdlestone, and forgot her love--her plighted troth to me!"

So thought Algernon Hurdlestone, as he followed the parish girl up the
broad uncarpeted oak stairs to his brother's apartment, shocked and
astonished at the indications of misery and decay which on every side
met his gaze. He had heard much of Mark's penurious habits, but he had
deemed the reports exaggerated or incorrect; he was now fully convinced
that they were but too true. Surprised that Mrs. Hurdlestone did not
appear to receive him, he inquired of Ruth, "if her mistress were at
home?"

"At home!--why, yes, sir; it's more than her life's worth to leave home.
She durst not go to church without master's leave."

"And is she well?"

"She be'ant never well; and the sooner she goes the better it will be
for her, depend upon that. She do lead a wretched life, the more's the
pity; for she is a dear kind lady, a thousand times too good for the
like o' him."

Algernon sighed deeply, while the girl delighted to get an opportunity
of abusing her tyrannical master, continued:

"My poor mistress has been looking out for you all day, sir; but when
your coach drove into the court-yard she died right away. The Squire got
into a terrible passion, and told me to carry her up into her own room,
and lock her in until company be gone. Howsumever I was too much
flurried to do that; for I am sure my dear missus is too ill to be seen
by strangers. He do keep her so shabby, that she have not a gownd fit to
wear; and she do look as pale as a ghost; and I am sure she is nearer to
her end than the stingy old Squire is to his."

Algernon possessed too much delicacy to ask the girl if Mark treated
Mrs. Hurdlestone ill; but whilst groping his way in the dark to his
brother's room, he was strongly tempted to question her more closely on
the subject. The account she had already given him of the unfortunate
lady filled his mind with indignation and regret. At the end of a long
gallery the girl suddenly stopped, and pointing to a half-open door,
told him that "that was the Squire's room," and suddenly disappeared.
The next moment, Algernon was by the sick-bed of his brother.

Not without a slight degree of perturbation he put aside the curtain;
Mark had sunk into a kind of stupor; he was not asleep, although his
eyes were closed, and his features so rigid and immovable, that at the
first glance Algernon drew back, under the impression that he was
already dead.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23