Chapter XVII: ‘between Two Worlds.’

The days wore on very slowly for Naomi in her father’s absence. Her heart was weighed down with anxiety on his account; but he had told her not to follow him, and, anxious though she was, she obeyed implicitly. A great burden had been taken from her mind by Joshua’s confession. Bitter as it was to know that her lover had fallen by her father’s hand, that the bright young life had been snapped short off, like a blossom from its stalk, in a burst of sinful passion, yet there was all the difference in the world between a fair fight and a dastardly assassination; and she was able now to think of her father as of other duellists she had heard and read about, red-handed sinners all, but not beyond the reach of human pity.

She was reconciled even to the idea of her father’s prolonged absence, of a separation which might extend over years. It would be better, happier for him to go out into untrodden fields, and do difficult work, for his Master’s sake. This pious labour would be his penance: in heathen lands he would find cities of atonement, from whose gates he might come forth loosed from the burden and stigma of his crime. She had longed herself to go into strange lands and teach heathen children the Gospel. What more natural than that her father, with his consciousness of a terrible sin to be expiated, should desire to brave dangers and endure hardships and trials in the great cause?

‘Let him come back to me ten years hence, old and bent and gray,’ said Naomi, ‘and I will praise God for His bounteous mercies. I will say that our lives have been full of blessings even after all our sorrows.’

This was her prayer--that he might go forth as a messenger of the Gospel, and do his work of expiation, and come back to her purified and happy. It was the old heroic Greek idea of atonement, only in a Christian and better form.

A letter had come from Penmoyle for Joshua, and was laid aside, unopened, awaiting tidings from him. No one supposed that the letter was of any particular importance. What they all waited for anxiously was a letter from Joshua himself.

It was Thursday, and Oswald Pentreath had been lying in the family vault for many days and nights. It seemed a natural thing already to think of him resting there with his ancestors, and it was almost possible to forget that he had lain for nearly a year in the darkness of the deserted mine, none knowing his fate. Strange how soon poor human nature resigns itself to the inevitable. Arnold bore the annihilation of all his hopes about his brother better than he could have supposed it possible to bear so heavy a blow. That agonising grief which he had felt when he supposed Oswald the victim of a treacherous assassin was lessened by Joshua’s confession. At least he had fallen face to face with death. The murderer had not crept behind him with uplifted knife, coming upon his victim in a ghostly silence. It had been a hard fate and a cruel one, but not so bad as this. And poor Naomi, the innocent sufferer from her lover’s inconstancy and her father’s sin--could he ever be sorry enough for her? could he ever be sufficiently kind, or gentle, or thoughtful for her dear sake? Consideration for her pleaded eloquently against his desire for revenge. Joshua must go unscathed, so far as human vengeance went, and take his punishment from God. This was the result of many a weary hour of thought that followed upon Arnold’s interview with Naomi.

Thursday morning brought another letter from Penmoyle, in the same handwriting as the last, but directed to Judith instead of to Joshua.

Miss Haggard broke the seal with a slight tremor, while Naomi waited full of anxiety. Why had her father not written?

‘Chestnut Cottage, Penmoyle,
Cornwall, June 26th.

‘Dear Miss Haggard,--I hope you will pardon the above
familiarity, but although we have not had the pleasure of
meeting, you can be no stranger to one who loves and reveres your
brother as I do.

‘I deeply regret to inform you that Mr. Haggard now lies in a
sadly precarious state. Indeed our doctor and another gentleman,
summoned at his advice from Penzance, entertain little hope of
his recovery. The shock caused by his wife’s death, which took
place prior to his arrival, caused an apoplectic stroke. He
recovered consciousness after several hours, but has never been
quite right in his mind since the seizure.

‘Feeling assured that you and the rest of his family would desire
to be with him at such a time, I hasten to communicate the sad
state of affairs, and beg you to make whatever use you please of
our small abode. It is entirely at your disposal, and my elder
sister and self will consider it a privilege to do all in our
power to ameliorate your sorrow by such attentions as sympathetic
hearts can offer. Our poor Cynthia’s funeral takes place to-day.
It is perhaps a blessing that in your suffering brother’s state
of mind he is scarcely conscious of passing events.

‘Awaiting your speedy arrival, I remain, dear Miss Haggard, your
obedient servant,

‘PRISCILLA WEBLING.’

Before she had read half this letter, Judith Haggard gave a shriek of horrified surprise, and her niece looked over her shoulder and read it with her. The two women stood side by side, devouring the lines with white agonised faces, each in her own way feeling that this sorrow was the deathblow to all hope. James was in the shop, busy, happy, ignorant of this evil. He was whistling the last popular melody as he went about his work. How awful it seemed to hear him!

Naomi’s grief found no outlet in tears or sobs or passionate speech. She stood with the letter in her hand, her lips trembling.

‘The coach, aunt, the coach!’ she gasped. ‘Is it too late?’

‘Gone half an hour, child; we must have a post-shay. Jim!’

The shrill voice rang through house and shop, and Jim appeared with a scared face at the parlour-door.

‘What’s the matter, aunt?’

‘Your father’s dying, and we’re going to him. Get us a post-shay.’

Jim looked from one to the other in awful wonder. Naomi tried to speak, and, failing, gave him Priscilla’s letter.

‘What!’ he cried, hurriedly reading, ‘the poor little stepmother dead and buried! Has the world come to an end?’

‘You unfeeling boy!’ exclaimed Judith. ‘To think of anybody else when your father’s in such a state!’

‘Father will come round again, please God; but poor little Cynthia--buried yesterday--so young and pretty! Isn’t it dreadful?’

‘Go for a chaise, Jim, for pity’s sake,’ cried Naomi. ‘Father may die while you stand wondering there. O, let me go to him, let me go! let me keep him back from death!’

James ran across to the First and Last, the only place in Combhaven where post-horses were to be had. There was a burst of sympathy from the stout landlord when he heard Jim’s news. The chaise should be ready in ten minutes--the best horses in his stable.

It was half an hour before the chaise was at the door, despite the landlord’s promises. Naomi and her aunt had put on their bonnets and packed a few necessaries in a carpet-bag, and had been waiting in the parlour ever so long, as it seemed to them, before an ancient yellow-bodied chariot, like that which had brought Joshua’s young bride to Combhaven, pulled up before the garden-gate.

‘You’ll stay at home and mind the business till I can come back, Jim,’ said Judith.

‘I’d rather go to poor father; but perhaps it’s best so,’ answered Jim. ‘But if he should be very bad, if there’s no chance of his getting over it, you’ll send for me, aunt. I should like to see him before--’

A sob strangled the young man’s speech, and he went back to the house, leaving them to get into the carriage unassisted. Some one was at Naomi’s side before she could mount the steps. It was Captain Pentreath, breathless with running.

‘Naomi, I have just heard of your sorrow,’ he said gently. ‘One of our men told me as I came across the meadow. Dear sister, let me go with you. Let me go with you, Miss Haggard,’ he added pleadingly to Judith. ‘I should like to go--to be of service to you, if I can--to ask your brother’s pardon for my violence the other night.’

‘You’d need be sorry for that, I think,’ answered Judith. ‘What’s the good of your coming? He’ll want to see his blood-relations, poor dear--that’s natural; but it can’t give him much pleasure to see you.’

‘I may be of use to you on the journey. Let me come, Miss Haggard. Two unprotected women, anxious, agitated as you are, ought not to undertake such a journey. These post-boys are such ruffians. I shall be able to prevent loss of time, to insure you civil treatment.’

Judith relented a little. Post-boys were an exacting and difficult race--greedy of gain, capable of abandoning their helpless fare upon a lonesome highway, or of colleaguing with highwaymen for a defenceless traveller’s spoliation. Perhaps Judith, though strong-minded enough at home, where every one trembled at her voice, felt that she should be a weak vessel abroad. She had never travelled farther than Barnstaple in her life; and to go up alone into the wilds of bleak and barren Cornwall--the very stronghold of witchcraft--a place where half the people were savage miners, and the other half wreckers and smugglers; and to be benighted, perhaps, on a moor where the Druids sacrificed human beings before the days of King Arthur!

These terrors were too much for Judith. The proffered escort of a courageous young man, open-handed and ready to make use of his purse for the gratification of post-boys, was not to be despised. He had brought a false charge against Joshua in an hour of temporary madness; but he had repented, and this act of to-day was a confession of his past folly. All Combhaven would know of it, and see how baseless he now felt his idea of Joshua’s guilt to have been. Judith gave way, but maintained her dignity even in the moment of concession.

‘It matters very little to me whether you come or stay,’ she said. ‘My mind’s too full of my poor brother to care about anything else. But Naomi may be glad of your company on the dark roads--girls are so timid.’

‘Indeed, aunt, I am not frightened,’ exclaimed Naomi.

‘I am coming with you,’ said Arnold decisively.

There was a seat at the back of the vehicle, a kind of rumble, and into this he mounted, after despatching a small boy to the Grange with a message for Nicholas the butler, who was to send his master’s valise on to Truro by the evening coach. Arnold would not ask so much as five minutes’ delay, lest Judith should change her mind and decline his company. So the post-boy smacked his whip, and the chaise went rattling through the long village street, to the delight of the inhabitants, who flocked out of their dwellings to witness the unwonted spectacle.

A long journey at any time; a weary one for aching hearts. Naomi looked out of the carriage-window with dull eyes that roamed over hill and valley, wood and winding stream, and saw no comfort anywhere. Was the journey never to be over? she wondered, as the slow hours rolled on; was there never to be an end of those green hedgerows, and tangled honeysuckles, and clambering dog-roses, and dusty wayside ferns, and sudden hollows, and jutting walls of hill?--these perpetual hills, at the foot of which the travellers descended, to walk in mournful silence to the top, where all the glory of the valley below could not move Naomi’s cold lips to a smile of gladness.

Arnold made no attempt at consolation. He entreated his companions to hope for the best, and after that made no further allusion to their grief. He talked to them very little, only showing himself anxious for their comfort and repose. He saved them all trouble about post-boys, or any of the details of their journey. They had nothing to do but be patient, and wait till darkness came, and the end. Even to eyes accustomed to the rustic seclusion of Combhaven, Penmoyle looked a curious out-of-the-world place as the post-chaise drove into the wide village street after sunset on that June evening. Lights twinkled feebly in two or three casements, wide apart and rare, as if the majority had gone to roost at curfew. There was one light much brighter than the rest, which seemed to Naomi to shine like a star. Some instinct of her heart told her that it was the candle in her father’s sick-room.

‘There,’ she cried, putting her head out of the window, and calling to the post-boy; ‘stop there.’

But Arnold had made his inquiries at the beginning of the village, and the boy was already pulling up his horses. That lighted casement belonged to Chestnut Cottage. The approach of the carriage had been heard within, and Deborah’s stiff curls were waving at the door, as she came out to receive her guests.

‘O dear Miss Haggard; O dear Miss Naomi,’ she gasped; ‘thank God you are come!’

‘Not too late!’ cried Naomi, going into the house; ‘not too late!’

‘No, dear young lady, praised be Heaven! He has asked for you so often.’

‘Take me to him, please--at once.’

‘But you ought to be prepared for the change--’

‘God will give me strength when his dear head is on my breast. Father, I am coming,’ she cried, as if her voice would carry strength and new life to the sick man.

She went up-stairs as quickly as if she had known the corkscrew staircase all her life. The door of her father’s room was open; the window opened wide to the summer night. The old-fashioned tent bedstead, with its dimity festooning and netted fringe, faced the door.

Who was it lying there, still as a stone figure, with a white strange face, and dark cavernous eyes--a face Naomi had never seen before? For a moment her heart failed, and she shrank away a step or two, as from something more awful than death. Was this her father?

Yes, the hollow eyes lighted up at sight of her, the livid lips moved tremulously, and then murmured, ‘Naomi!’

In the next instant she was on her knees beside his bed, clasping the heavy hands, crying over him, kissing him with those passionate despairing kisses life gives to death.

‘Dearest, I have come to nurse you, to bring you back to life. God will help me. I have been praying for you all through our long journey. Father, you will get well for my sake.’

‘I am dying, Naomi. The doctor and my old friend Martin have both told me so. Do not cry, dear; I am suffering so little. The passage is made very easy for me. And I have an infinite inextinguishable faith in my Redeemer’s love. I go to Him without fear. He has loosed me from the burden of my sin. Yes, Naomi, it is no idle boast. I feel and know that I am forgiven. My punishment has been awarded here. My broken heart has reconciled me with my God.’

‘You shall not die!’ said Naomi. ‘God cannot be so cruel as to part us now, when there is no cloud between us any more, when I can love you and honour you as I did in my childhood. Father, you will live for my sake.’

‘No, dear, I have done with earthly life. God sent His stroke in mercy when I came into this house and found my darling dead. O Naomi, my latter days have been full of sin. I have been the slave of passion. And yet I might have been so happy. I can see her still--sitting in the sunshine--hair like spun gold--so helpless and lovely, so ignorant of good and evil--like Eve when God gave her to Adam.’

His mind wandered a little after this. All through the night he lay in the same attitude, a corpse-like figure, a soul hovering between life and death. Naomi never stirred from her seat beside his pillow, save to kneel and pray. Judith and Priscilla sat a little way aloof, watching the two, only coming nearer at intervals to moisten the sick man’s lips with a feather dipped in brandy.

About an hour after daybreak Arnold, who had spent the night in the parlour below, came slowly up the stair, and stood on the threshold. Joshua had been lying for a long time with his eyes closed, breathing heavily, and his watchers had supposed him sleeping; but at the sound of Arnold’s cautious footfall he opened his eyes, and those restless hands of his fastened with a nervous grasp upon the coverlet.

‘Is that Captain Pentreath?’ he asked his daughter.

‘Yes, dear father.’

‘Let the others go away,’ looking dimly round at the two women; ‘I want to be alone with you and him.’

Priscilla and Judith left the room, full of wonder.

‘You got my letter?’ he said.

‘Yes, Mr. Haggard; and I am here to ask your forgiveness for the accusation I brought against you. When I found my poor brother in his secret grave I believed him the victim of a murderer. I am willing now to believe that he was the victim of his own folly, and that he willingly staked his life against yours.’

Joshua was silent. Some kind of struggle--whether bodily or mental those who watched him could not tell--was racking him. His nether lip worked convulsively; the veins stood up darkly purple from the broad strong brow.

‘My letter told the truth,’ he said after that painful pause, ‘but not all the truth. I am going to face an offended God--going to Him confident in His illimitable mercy. Naomi, do not hate me when I am dead;’ his hands wandered helplessly for a little, and then he clasped them round her neck, and let his head fall on her shoulder; ‘do not hate me, dear. Your lover was murdered. He was generous, and I was a dastard. We stood up, face to face, each with a pistol in his hand. I was to count three, he told me, and then take aim. But as I lifted my hand to aim at his heart I saw his arm flung up, his pistol pointed to the sky. It was but an instant, fleeter than a breath, before I fired straight at his breast. It was thirty years since I had pulled a trigger--not since I was an idle lad, and went rabbit-shooting with my father’s old blunderbuss. Yet my aim was deadly. The bullet pierced his heart. He had fired in the air. I had just time enough to see and understand what he was doing before I killed him. This was the crime that weighed upon my soul and dragged me down to the pit. O God, I can see him now, with his face lifted up, the sun shining on it, his arm raised to fire in the air. It was but a flash, scarce time for thought, but when it was over I knew myself a murderer. O God, only an instant between everlasting glory and eternal condemnation, unless Thine infinite sacrifice can blot out mine iniquity.’

There was silence. Naomi’s face was buried in the coverlet. Arnold walked across to the open window, and stood there looking out at the gray morning sky, deeply thoughtful.

‘My God, my sin is heavy,’ ejaculated Joshua after an interval; ‘Thou only knowest my temptation. I, who had preached against duelling, became a duellist; I, who had taught men brotherly love, stained my hands with my brother’s blood. Only in illimitable mercy can I find hope; and who shall tell the sinner his case is hopeless when God has given the promise of forgiveness?’

He lay for a long time after this in a state that was almost unconsciousness. The doctor came and felt his pulse, and told them that he was slowly sinking. It was only the vigour of his constitution which had held out so long against death. The nobly-built frame had wrestled involuntarily with man’s last enemy, while the spirit yearned to pass the mystic river, and rest in the fair land beyond.

That day wore on, and the night which followed it, and another long summer day, which seemed to Naomi different even in the colour of its sky from every other day in her life. The sunshine climbed the whitewashed wall, and touched with brighter gold the tarnished gilding of the old oval picture-frames, and glorified the old cups and saucers and quaint little pottery jars on the narrow chimneypiece; and still Joshua lay, awfully motionless, with his dull eyes turned to the light.

It was sunset when the dreaded change came. They were all on their knees praying silently when Joshua lifted himself up in the bed, and stretched out his arms towards that fading glory in the western sky.

‘Cynthia--chosen--beloved,’ he cried; ‘innocent as a little child--ignorant of evil! Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’

And so, with a long-drawn shivering sigh, he fell back upon the pillow; and, as the sun went down behind a dark range of moorland, this little lamp of light went out with it, no less secure of resurrection.