CHAPTER XVII

"It was not until a year after their return from abroad that the events happened which terminated so disastrously Mrs. Neville's career in her own family. I am perplexed how to begin the narration, the story is so confused and obscure; the mystery that envelops the catastrophe so impenetrable; the circumstances that we really know so few, and these gleaned, as it were, ear by ear, as dropped in the passage of the event; so making, if you will excuse my rustic metaphor, a meager, ill-assorted sheaf. Mrs. Neville had been a wife nearly ten years; never had she done one act that could be disapproved by the most circumspect; never had she swerved from that veracity and open line of conduct which was a safeguard against the mingled ardour and timidity of her disposition. It required extraordinary circumstances to taint her reputation, as, to say the least, it is tainted; and we are still in the dark as to the main instrument by which these circumstances were brought about. Their result is too obvious. At one moment Mrs. Neville was an honoured and beloved wife; a mother, whose heart's pulsations depended on the well-being of her children; and whose fond affection was to them as the sun's warmth to the opening flower. At the next, where is she? Silence and mystery wrap her from us; and surmise is busy in tracing shapes of infamy from the fragments of truth that we can gather.

"On the return of the family from abroad, they again repaired to their seat of Dromore; and, at the time to which I allude, Mr. Neville had left them there, to go to London on business. He went for a week; but his stay was prolonged to nearly two months. He heard regularly from his wife. Her letters were more full of her children and household than herself; but they were kind; and her maternal heart warmed, as she wrote, into anticipations of future happiness in her children, greater even than she now enjoyed. Every line breathed of home and peace; every word seemed to emanate from a mind in which lurked no concealed feeling, no one thought unconfessed or unapproved. To such a home, cheered by so much beauty and excellence, Sir Boyvill returned, as he declares, with eager and grateful affection. The time came when he was expected at home; and true, both to the day and to the hour, he arrived. It was at eleven at night. His carriage drove through the grounds; the doors of the house were thrown open; several eager faces were thrust forward with more of curiosity and anxiety than is at all usual in an English household; and as he alighted, the servants looked aghast, and exchanged glances of terror. The truth was soon divulged. At about six in the evening, Mrs. Neville, who dined early in the absence of her husband, had gone to walk in the park with Gerard; since then, neither had returned.

"When the darkness, which closed in with a furious wind and thunder-storm, rendered her prolonged absence a matter of solicitude, the servants had gone to seek her in the grounds. They found their mistress's key in the lock of a small masked gate that opened on a green lane. They went one way up the lane to meet her; but found no trace. They followed the other, with like ill success. Again they searched the park with more care; and again resorted to the lanes and fields; but in vain. The obvious idea was, that she had taken shelter from the storm; and a horrible fear presented itself, that she might have found no better retreat than a tree or hay-rick, and that she had been struck by the lightning. A slight hope remained, that she had gone along the high-road to meet her husband, and would return with him. His arrival alone took from them this last hope.

"The country was now raised. Servants and tenants were sent divers ways; some on horseback, some on foot. Though summer-time, the night was inclement and tempestuous; a furious west wind swept the earth; high trees were bowed to the ground; and the blast howled and roared, at once baffling and braving every attempt to hear cries or distinguish sounds.

"Dromore is situated in a beautiful, but wild and thinly--inhabited part of Cumberland, on the verge of the plain that forms the coast where it first breaks into uplands, dingles, and ravines; there is no high-road towards the sea--but as they took the one that led to Lancaster, they approached the ocean, and the distant roar of its breakers filled up the pauses of the gale. It was on this road, at the distance of some five miles from the house, that Gerard was found. He was lying on the road in a sort of stupor--which could be hardly called sleep--his clothes were drenched by the storm, and his limbs stiff from cold. When first found, and disturbed, he looked wildly around; and his cry was for his mother--terror was painted in his face--and his intellects seemed deranged by a sudden and terrific shock. He was taken home. His father hurried to him, questioning him eagerly--but the child only raved that his mother was being carried from him; and his pathetic cry of 'Come back, mamma--stop--stop for me!' filled every one with terror and amazement. As speedily as possible, medical assistance was sent for; the physician found the boy in a high fever, the result of fright, exposure to the storm, and subsequent sleep in his wet clothes in the open air. It was many days before his life could be answered for--or the delirium left him--and still he raved that his mother was being carried off, and would not stop for him, and often he tried to rise from his bed under the notion of pursuing her.

"At length consciousness returned--consciousness of the actual objects around him, mingled with an indistinct recollection of the events that immediately preceded his illness. His pulse was calm; his reason restored; and he lay quietly with open eyes fixed on the door of his chamber. At last he showed symptoms of uneasiness, and asked for his mother. Mr. Neville was called, as he had desired he might be the moment his son showed signs of being rational. Gerard looked up in his father's face with an expression of disappointment, and again murmured, 'Send mamma to me.'

"Fearful of renewing his fever by awakening his disquietude, his father told him that mamma was tired and asleep, and could not be disturbed.

"'Then she has come back?' he cried; 'that man did not take her quite away? The carriage drove here at last.'

"Such words renewed all their consternation. Afraid of questioning the child himself, lest he should terrify him, Mr. Neville sent the nurse who had been with him from infancy, to extract information. His story was wild and strange; and here I must remark, that the account drawn from him by the woman's questions differs somewhat from that to which he afterward adhered; though not so much in actual circumstances as in the colouring given. This his father attributes to his subsequent endeavours to clear his mother from blame; while he asserts, and I believe with truth, that time and knowledge, by giving him an insight into motives, threw a new light on the words and actions which he remembered; and that circumstances which bore one aspect to his ignorance, became clearly visible in another, when he was able to understand the real meaning of several fragments of conversation which had at first been devoid of sense.

"All that he could tell during this first stage of inquiry was, that his mother had taken him to walk with her in the grounds, that she had unlocked the gate that opened out on the lane with her own key, and that a gentleman was without waiting.

"Had he ever seen the gentleman before?

"Never; he did not know him, and the stranger took no notice of him; he heard his mamma call him Rupert.

"His mother took the stranger's arm, and walked on through the lane, while he sometimes ran on before, and sometimes remained at her side. They conversed earnestly, and his mother at one time cried; he, Gerard, felt very angry with the gentleman for making her cry, and took her hand, and begged her to leave him and come away; but she kissed the boy, told him to run on, and they would return very soon.

"Yet they did not return, but walked on to where the lane was intersected by the high-road. Here they stopped, and continued to converse; but it seemed as if she were saying good-by to the stranger, when a carriage, driven at full speed, was seen approaching; it stopped close to them; it was an open carriage, a sort of calèche, with the head pulled forward low down; as it stopped his mother went up to it, when the stranger, pulling the child's hand from hers, hurried her into the carriage, and sprang in after, crying out to him, 'Jump in, my boy!' but, before he could do so, the postillion whipped the horses, who started forward almost with a bound, and were in a gallop on the instant; he heard his mother scream; the words 'My child! my son!' reached his ears, shrieked in agony. He ran wildly after the carriage; it disappeared, but still he ran on. It must stop somewhere, and he would reach it--his mother had called for him; and thus, crying, breathless, panting, he ran along the high-road; the carriage had long been out of sight, the sun had set; the wind, rising in gusts, brought on the thunder-storm; yet still he pursued, till nature and his boyish strength gave way, and he threw himself on the ground to gain breath. At every sound which he fancied might be that of carriage-wheels, he started up; but it was only the howling of the blast in the trees, and the hoarse muttering of the now distant thunder; twice and thrice he rose from the earth and ran forward; till, wet through and utterly exhausted, he lay on the ground, weeping bitterly, and expecting to die.

"This was all his story. It produced a strict inquiry among the servants, and then circumstances scarcely adverted to were remembered, and some sort of information gained. About a week or ten days before, a gentleman on horseback, unattended by any servant, had called. He asked for Mrs. Neville; the servant requested his name, but he muttered that it was no matter. He was ushered into the room where their mistress was sitting; he stayed at least two hours; and, when he was gone, they remarked that her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping. The stranger called again, and Mrs. Neville was denied to him.

"Inquiries were now instituted in the neighbourhood. One or two persons remembered something of a stranger gentleman who had been seen riding about the country, mounted on a fine bay horse. One evening he was seen coming from the masked gate in the park, which caused it to be believed that he was on a visit at Dromore. Nothing more was known of him.

"The servants tasked themselves to remember more particularly the actions of their lady, and it was remembered that one evening she went to walk alone in the grounds, some accident having prevented Gerard from accompanying her. She returned very late, at ten o'clock; and there was, her maid declared, a good deal of confusion in her manner. She threw herself on a sofa, ordered the lights to be taken away, and remained alone for two hours past her usual time for retiring for the night, till, at last, her maid ventured in to ask her if she needed anything. She was awake, and, when lights were brought, had evidently been weeping. After this she only went out in the carriage with the children, until the fatal night of her disappearance. It was remembered, also, that she received several letters, brought by a strange man, who left them without waiting for any answer. She received one the very morning of the day when she left her home, and this last note was found; it threw some light on the fatal mystery. It was only dated with the day of the week, and began abruptly:--

"'On one condition I will obey you; I will never see you more--I will leave the country--I will forget my threats against the most hated life in the world; he is safe on one condition. You must meet me this evening; I desire to see you for the last time. Come to the gate of your park that opens on the lane, which you opened for me a few nights ago; you will find me waiting outside. I will not detain you long. A farewell to you and to my just revenge shall be breathed at once. If you do not come I will wait till night, till I am past hope, and then enter your grounds, wait till he returns, and--oh, do not force me to say what you will call wicked and worse than unkind, but come, come, and prevent all