The Flight of the Shadow

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"Here, Orbie!" cried John; "help me to bundle him out before he comes to
himself--Take what you would have!" he said, as between us we shoved him
out on the gravel.

I fetched smelling-salts and brandy, and everything I could think
of--fetched Martha too, and between us we got her on the sofa, but lady
Cairnedge lay motionless. She breathed indeed, but did not open her eyes.
John stood ready to do anything for her, but his countenance revealed
little compassion. Whatever the cause of his mother's swoon--he had never
seen her in one before--he was certain it had to do with some bad passage
in her life. He said so to me that same evening. "But what could the
sight of my uncle have to do with it?" I asked. "Probably he knows
something, or she thinks he does," he answered.

"Wouldn't it be better to put her to bed, and send for the doctor, John?"
I suggested at last.

Perhaps the sound of my voice calling her son by his Christian name,
stung her proud ear, for the same moment she sat up, passed her hands
over her eyes, and cast a scared gaze about the room.

"Where am I? Is it gone?" she murmured, looking ghastly.

No one answered her.

"Call Parker," she said, feebly, yet imperiously.

Still no one spoke.

She kept glancing sideways at the window, where nothing was to be seen
but the gathering night. In a few moments she rose and walked straight
from the room, erect, but white as a corpse. I followed, passed her, and
opened the hall-door. There stood the carriage, waiting, as if nothing
unusual had happened, Parker seated in the rumble, with one of the
footmen beside him. The other man stood by the carriage-door. He opened
it immediately; her ladyship stepped in, and dropped on the seat; the
carriage rolled away.

I went back to John.

"I must leave you, darling!" he said. "I cannot subject you to the risk
of such another outrage! I fear sometimes my mother may be what she would
have you think me. I ought to have said, I hope she is. It would be the
only possible excuse for her behaviour. The natural end of loving one's
own way, is to go mad. If you don't get it, you go mad; if you do get it,
you go madder--that's all the difference!--I must go!"

I tried to expostulate with him, but it was of no use.

"Where will you go?" I said. "You cannot go home!"

"I would at once," he answered, "if I could take the reins in my own
hands. But I will go to London, and see the family-lawyer. He will tell
me what I had better do."

"You have no money!" I said.

"How do you know that?" he returned with a smile. "Have you been
searching my pockets?"

"John!" I cried.

He broke into a merry laugh.

"Your uncle will lend me a five-pound-note," he said.

"He will lend you as much as you want; but I don't think he's in the
house," I answered. "I have two myself, though! I'll run and fetch them."

I bounded away to get the notes. It was like having a common purse
already, to lend John ten pounds! But I had no intention of letting him
leave the house the same day he was first out of his room after such an
illness--that was, if I could help it.

My uncle had given me the use of a drawer in that same cabinet in which
were the precious stones; and there, partly, I think, from the pride of
sharing the cabinet with my uncle, I had long kept everything I counted
precious: I should have kept Zoe there if she had not been alive and too
big!

CHAPTER XXV.

A VERY STRANGE THING.

The moment I opened the door of the study, I saw my uncle--in his
think-chair, his head against the back of it, his face turned to the
ceiling. I ran to his side and dropped on my knees, thinking he was dead.
He opened his eyes and looked at me, but with such a wan, woe-begone
countenance, that I burst into a passion of tears.

"What is it, uncle dear?" I gasped and sobbed.

"Nothing very new, little one," he answered.

"It is something terrible, uncle," I cried, "or you would not look like
that! Did those horrid men hurt you? You did give it them well! You came
down on them like the angel on the Assyrians!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, little one!" he returned. "What
men?"

"The men that came with John's mother to carry him off. If it hadn't been
for my beautiful uncle, they would have done it too! How I wondered what
had become of you! I was almost in despair. I thought you had left us to
ourselves--and you only waiting, like God, for the right moment!"

He sat up, and stared at me, bewildered.

"I had forgotten all about John!" he said.

"As to what you think I did, I know nothing about it. I haven't been out
of this room since I saw--that spectre in the kitchen."

"John's mother, you mean, uncle?"

"Ah! she's John's mother, is she? Yes, I thought as much--and it was more
than my poor brain could stand! It was too terrible!--My little one, this
is death to you and me!"

My heart sank within me. One thought only went through my head--that,
come what might, I would no more give up John, than if I were already
married to him in the church.

"But why--what is it, uncle?" I said, hardly able to get the words out.

"I will tell you another time," he answered, and rising, went to the
door.

"John is going to London," I said, following him.

"Is he?" he returned listlessly.

"He wants to see his lawyer, and try to get things on a footing of some
sort between his mother and him."

"That is very proper," he replied, with his hand on the lock.

"But you don't think it would be safe for him to travel to-night--do you,
uncle--so soon after his illness?" I asked.

"No, I cannot say I do. It would not be safe. He is welcome to stop till
to-morrow."

"Will you not tell him so, uncle? He is bent on going!"

"I would rather not see him! There is no occasion. It will be a great
relief to me when he is able--quite able, I mean--to go home to his
mother--or where it may suit him best."

It was indeed like death to hear my uncle talk so differently about John.
What had he done to be treated in this way--taken up and made a friend
of, and then cast off without reason given! My dear uncle was not at all
like himself! To say he forgot our trouble and danger, and never came
near us in our sore peril, when we owed our deliverance to him! and now
to speak like this concerning John! Something was terribly wrong with
him! I dared hardly think what it could be.

I stood speechless.

My uncle opened the door, and went down the steps. The sound of his feet
along the corridor and down the stair to the kitchen, died away in my
ears. My life seemed to go ebbing with it. I was stranded on a desert
shore, and he in whom I had trusted was leaving me there!

I came to myself a little, got the two five-pound-notes, and returned to
John.

When I reached the door of the room, I found my heart in my throat, and
my brains upside down. What was I to say to him? How could I let him go
away so late? and how could I let him stay where his departure would be a
relief? Even I would have him gone from where he was not wanted! I saw,
however, that my uncle must not have John's death at his door--that I
must persuade him to stay the night. I went in, and gave him the notes,
but begged him, for my love, to go to bed. In the morning, I said, I
would drive him to the station.

He yielded with difficulty--but with how little suspicion that all the
time I wished him gone! I went to bed only to lie listening for my
uncle's return. It was long past midnight ere he came.

In the morning I sent Penny to order the phaeton, and then ran to my
uncle's room, in the hope he would want to see John before he left: I was
not sure he had realized that he was going.

He was neither in his bed-room nor in the study. I went to the stable.
Dick was putting the horse to the phaeton. He told me he had heard his
master, two hours before, saddle Thanatos, and ride away. This made me
yet more anxious about him. He did not often ride out early--seldom
indeed after coming home late! Things seemed to threaten complication!

John looked so much better, and was so eager after the projected
interview with his lawyer, that I felt comforted concerning him. I did
not tell him what my uncle had said the night before. It would, I felt,
be wrong to mention what my uncle might wish forgotten; and as I did not
know what he meant, it could serve no end. We parted at the station very
much as if we had been married half a century, and I returned home to
brood over the strange things that had happened. But before long I found
myself in a weltering swamp of futile speculation, and turned my thoughts
perforce into other channels, lest I should lose the power of thinking,
and be drowned in reverie: my uncle had taught me that reverie is Phaeton
in the chariot of Apollo.

The weary hours passed, and my uncle did not come. I had never before
been really uneasy at his longest absence; but now I was far more anxious
about him than about John. Alas, through me fresh trouble had befallen my
uncle as well as John! When the night came, I went to bed, for I was very
tired: I must keep myself strong, for something unfriendly was on its
way, and I must be able to meet it! I knew well I should not sleep until
I heard the sounds of his arrival: those came about one o'clock, and in a
moment I was dreaming.

In my dream I was still awake, and still watching for my uncle's return.
I heard the sound of Death's hoofs, not on the stones of the yard, but on
the gravel before the house, and coming round the house till under my
window. There he stopped, and I heard my uncle call to me to come down:
he wanted me. In my dream I was a child; I sprang out of bed, ran from
the house on my bare feet, jumped into his down-stretched arms, and was
in a moment seated in front of him. Death gave a great plunge, and went
off like the wind, cleared the gate in a flying stride, and rushed up
the hill to the heath. The wind was blowing behind us furiously: I could
hear it roaring, but did not feel it, for it could not overtake us; we
out-stripped and kept ahead of it; if for a moment we slackened speed, it
fell upon us raging.

We came at length to the pool near the heart of the heath, and I wondered
that, at the speed we were making, we had been such a time in reaching
it. It was the dismalest spot, with its crumbling peaty banks, and its
water brown as tea. Tradition declared it had no bottom--went down into
nowhere.

"Here," said my uncle, bringing his horse to a sudden halt, "we had a
terrible battle once, Death and I, with the worm that lives in this hole.
You know what worm it is, do you not?"

I had heard of the worm, and any time I happened, in galloping about the
heath, to find myself near the pool, the thought would always come back
with a fresh shudder--what if the legend were a true one, and the worm
was down there biding his time! but anything more about the worm I had
never heard.

"No, uncle," I answered; "I don't know what worm it is."

"Ah," he answered, with a sigh, "if you do not take the more care, little
one, you will some day learn, not what the worm is called, but what it
is! The worm that lives there, is the worm that never dies."

I gave a shriek; I had never heard of the horrible creature before--so it
seemed in my dream. To think of its being so near us, and never dying,
was too terrible.

"Don't be frightened, little one," he said, pressing me closer to his
bosom. "Death and I killed it. Come with me to the other side, and you
will see it lying there, stiff and stark."

"But, uncle," I said, "how can it be dead--how can you have killed it, if
it never dies?"

"Ah, that is the mystery!" he returned.

"But come and see. It was a terrible fight. I never had such a fight--or
dear old Death either. But she's dead now! It was worth living for, to
make away with such a monster!"

We rode round the pool, cautiously because of the crumbling banks, to see
the worm lie dead. On and on we rode. I began to think we must have
ridden many times round the hole.

"I wonder where it can be, uncle!" I said at length.

"We shall come to it very soon," he answered.

"But," I said, "mayn't we have ridden past it without seeing it?"

He laughed a loud and terrible laugh.

"When once you have seen it, little one," he replied, "you too will laugh
at the notion of having ridden past it without seeing it. The worm that
never dies is hardly a thing to escape notice!"

We rode on and on. All at once my uncle threw up his hands, dropping the
reins, and with a fearful cry covered his face.

"It is gone! I have not killed it! No, I have not! It is here! it is
here!" he cried, pressing his hand to his heart. "It is here, and it was
here all the time I thought it dead! What will become of me! I am lost,
lost!"

At the word, old Death gave a scream, and laying himself out, flew with
all the might of his swift limbs to get away from the place. But the
wind, which was behind us as we came, now stormed in our faces; and
presently I saw we should never reach home, for, with all Death's fierce
endeavour, we moved but an inch or two in the minute, and that with a
killing struggle.

"Little one," said my uncle, "if you don't get down we shall all be lost.
I feel the worm rising. It is your weight that keeps poor Death from
making any progress."

I turned my head, leaning past my uncle, so as to see behind him. A long
neck, surmounted by a head of indescribable horror, was slowly rising
straight up out of the middle of the pool. It should not catch them! I
slid down by my uncle's leg. The moment I touched the ground and let go,
away went Death, and in an instant was out of sight. I was not afraid. My
heart was lifted up with the thought that I was going to die for my uncle
and old Death. The red worm was on the bank. It was crawling toward me. I
went to meet it. It sprang from the ground, threw itself upon me, and
twisted itself about me. It was a human embrace, the embrace of some one
unknown that loved me!

I awoke and left the dream. But the dream never left me.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE EVIL DRAWS NIGHER.

I rose early, and went to my uncle's room. He was awake, but complained
of headache. I took him a cup of tea, and at his request left him.

About noon Martha brought me a letter where I sat alone in the
drawing-room. I carried it to my uncle. He took it with a trembling hand,
read it, and fell back with his eyes closed. I ran for brandy.

"Don't be frightened, little one," he called after me. "I don't want
anything."

"Won't you tell me what is the matter, uncle?" I said, returning. "Is it
necessary I should be kept ignorant?"

"Not at all, my little one."

"Don't you think, uncle," I dared to continue, forgetting in my love all
difference of years, "that, whatever it be that troubles us, it must be
better those who love us should know it? Is there some good in a secret
after all?"

"None, my darling," he answered. "The thing that made me talk to you so
against secrets when you were a child, was, that I had one myself--one
that was, and is, eating the heart out of me. But that woman shall not
know and you be ignorant! I will not have a secret with _her!_--Leave me
now, please, little one."

I rose at once.

"May I take the letter with me, uncle?" I asked.

He rubbed his forehead with a still trembling hand. The trembling of that
beloved hand filled me with such a divine sense of pity, that for the
first time I seemed to know God, causing in me that consciousness! The
whole human mother was roused in me for my uncle. I would die, I would
kill to save him! The worm was welcome to swallow me! My very being was a
well of loving pity, pouring itself out over that trembling hand.

He took up the letter, gave it to me, and turned his face away with a
groan. I left the room in strange exaltation--the exaltation of merest
love.

I went to the study, and there read the hateful letter.

Here it is. Having transcribed it, I shall destroy it.

"Sir,--For one who persists in coming between a woman and her son, who
will blame the mother if she cast aside forbearance! I would have spared
you as hitherto; I will spare you no longer. You little thought when you
crossed me who I was--the one in the world in whose power you lay! I
would perish ever-lastingly rather than permit one of my blood to marry
one of yours. My words are strong; you are welcome to call them
unladylike; but you shall not doubt what I mean. You know perfectly that,
if I denounce you as a murderer, I can prove what I say; and as to my
silence for so many years, I am able thoroughly to account for it. I
shall give you no further warning. You know where my son is: if he is not
in my house within two days, I shall have you arrested. _I have made up
my mind._

"Lucretia Cairnedge.

"Rising-Manor, July 15, 18--."

"Whoever be the father, she's the mother of lies!" I exclaimed.--"My
uncle--the best and gentlest of men, a murderer!"

I laughed aloud in my indignation and wrath.

But, though the woman was a liar, she must have something to say with a
show of truth! How else would she dare intimidation with such a man? How
else could her threat have so wrought upon my uncle? What did she know,
or imagine she knew? What could be the something on which she founded her
lie?--That my uncle was going to tell me, nor did I dread hearing his
story. No revelation would lower him in my eyes! Of that I was confident.
But I little thought how long it would be before it came, or what a
terrible tale it would prove.

I ran down the stair with the vile paper in my hand.

"The wicked woman!" I cried. "If she _be_ John's mother, I don't care:
she's a devil and a liar!"

"Hush, hush, little one!" said my uncle, with a smile in which the
sadness seemed to intensify the sweetness; "you do not _know_ anything
against her! You do not _know_ she is a liar!"

"There are things, uncle, one knows without knowing!"

"What if I said she told no lie?"

"I should say she was a liar although she told no lie. My uncle is not
what she threatens to say he is!"

"But men have repented, and grown so different you would not know them:
how can you tell it has not been so with me? I may have been a bad man
once, and grown better!"

"I know you are trying to prepare me for what you think will be a shock,
uncle!" I answered; "but I want no preparing. Out with your worst! I defy
you!"

Ah me, confident! But I had not to repent of my confidence!

My uncle gave a great sigh. He looked as if there was nothing for him now
but tell all. Evidently he shrank from the task.

He put his hand over his eyes, and said slowly,--

"You belong to a world, little one, of which you know next to nothing.
More than Satan have fallen as lightning from heaven!"

He lay silent so long that I was constrained to speak again.

"Well, uncle dear," I said, "are you not going to tell me?"

"I cannot," he answered.

There was absolute silence for, I should think, about twenty minutes. I
could not and would not urge him to speak. What right had I to rouse a
killing effort! He was not bound to tell _me_ anything! But I mourned the
impossibility of doing my best for him, poor as that best might be.

"Do not think, my darling," he said at last, and laid his hand on my head
as I knelt beside him, "that I have the least difficulty in trusting you;
it is only in telling you. I would trust you with my eternal soul. You
can see well enough there is something terrible to tell, for would I not
otherwise laugh to scorn the threat of that bad woman? No one on the
earth has so little right to say what she knows of me. Yet I do share a
secret with her which feels as if it would burst my heart. I wish it
would. That would open the one way out of all my trouble. Believe me,
little one, if any ever needed God, I need him. I need the pardon that
goes hand in hand with righteous judgment, the pardon of him who alone
can make lawful excuse."

"May God be your judge, uncle, and neither man nor woman!"

"I do not think _you_ would altogether condemn me, little one, much as I
loathe myself--terribly as I deserve condemnation."

"Condemn you, uncle! I want to know all, just to show you that nothing
can make the least difference. If you were as bad as that bad woman says,
you should find there was one of your own blood who knew what love meant.
But I know you are good, uncle, whatever you may have done."

"Little one, you comfort me," sighed my uncle. "I cannot tell you this
thing, for when I had told it, I should want to kill myself more than
ever. But neither can I bear that you should not know it. I will _not_
have a secret with that woman! I have always intended to tell you
everything. I have the whole fearful story set down for your eyes--and
those of any you may wish to see it: I cannot speak the words into your
ears. The paper I will give you now; but you will not open it until I
give you leave."

"Certainly not, uncle."

"If I should die before you have read it, I permit and desire you to read
it. I know your loyalty so well, that I believe you would not look at it
even after my death, if I had not given you permission. There are those
who treat the dead as if they had no more rights of any kind. 'Get away
to Hades,' they say; 'you are nothing now.' But you will not behave so to
your uncle, little one! When the time comes for you to read my story,
remember that I _now_, in preparation for the knowledge that will give
you, ask you to pardon me _then_ for all the pain it will cause you and
your husband--John being that husband. I have tried to do my best for
you, Orbie: how much better I might have done had I had a clear
conscience, God only knows. It may be that I was the tenderer uncle that
I could not be a better one."

He hid his face in his hands, and burst into a tempest of weeping.

It was terrible to see the man to whom I had all my life looked with a
reverence that prepared me for knowing the great father, weeping like a
bitterly repentant and self-abhorrent child. It seemed sacrilege to be
present. I felt as if my eyes, only for seeing him thus, deserved the
ravens to pick them out.

I could not contain myself. I rose and threw my arms about him, got close
to him as a child to her mother, and, as soon as the passion of my love
would let me, sobbed out,

"Uncle! darling uncle! I love you more than ever! I did not know before
that I could love so much! I could _kill_ that woman with my own hands! I
wish I had killed her when I pulled her down that day! It is right to
kill poisonous creatures: she is worse than any snake!"

He smiled a sad little smile, and shook his head. Then first I seemed to
understand a little. A dull flash went through me.

I stood up, drew back, and gazed at him. My eyes fixed themselves on his.
I stared into them. He had ceased to weep, and lay regarding me with calm
response.

"You don't mean, uncle,--?"

"Yes, little one, I do. That woman was the cause of the action for which
she threatens to denounce me as a murderer. I do not say she intended to
bring it about; but none the less was she the consciously wicked and
wilful cause of it.--And you will marry her son, and be her daughter!" he
added, with a groan as of one in unutterable despair.

I sprang back from him. My very proximity was a pollution to him while he
believed such a thing of me!

"Never, uncle, never!" I cried. "How can you think so ill of one who
loves you as I do! I will denounce _her!_ She will be hanged, and we
shall be at peace!"

"And John?" said my uncle.

"John must look after himself!" I answered fiercely. "Because he chooses
to have such a mother, am I to bring her a hair's-breadth nearer to my
uncle! Not for any man that ever was born! John must discard his mother,
or he and I are as we were! A mother! She is a hyena, a shark, a monster!
Uncle, she is a _devil!_--I don't care! It is true; and what is true is
the right thing to say. I will go to her, and tell her to her face what
she is!"

I turned and made for the door. My heart felt as big as the biggest
man's.

"If she kill you, little one," said my uncle quietly, "I shall be left
with nobody to take care of me!"

I burst into fresh tears. I saw that I was a fool, and could do nothing.

"Poor John!--To have such a mother!" I sobbed. Then in a rage of
rebellion I cried, "I don't believe she _is_ his mother! Is it possible
now, uncle--does it stand to reason, that such a pestilence of a woman
should ever have borne such a child as my John? I don't, I can't, I won't
believe it!"

"I am afraid there are mysteries in the world quite as hard to explain!"
replied my uncle.

"I confess, if I had known who was his mother, I should have been far
from ready to yield my consent to your engagement."

"What does it matter?" I said. "Of course I shall not marry him!"

"Not marry him, child!" returned my uncle. "What are you thinking of? Is
the poor fellow to suffer for, as well as by the sins of his mother?"

"If you think, uncle, that I will bring you into any kind of relation
with that horrible woman, if the worst of it were only that you would
have to see her once because she was my husband's mother, you are
mistaken. She to threaten you if you did not send back her son, as if
John were a horse you had stolen! You have been the angel of God about me
all the days of my life, but even to please you, I cannot consent to
despise myself. Besides, you know what she threatens!"

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