IT had been observed, as I have already said, that my Lady had not left the Abbey grounds for these many weeks; but there had been one exception to that course of conduct. She had never omitted to visit, as usual, her late husband's grave, and to lay upon it a posy of spring-flowers, gathered by her own hands; but she did this now in the evening, instead of the daytime, as heretofore. It was not, however, likely that any intruder should be found there at any hour.

Whoever of the household saw her walking in the direction of the little church—only a stone's-throw from the servants' offices—took great care to avoid her, or to appear, if they needs must meet her, unconscious of her errand; and while she was there, no domestic used the little zigzag path among the grass-grown graves that formed the short-cut to the village. The country folk were forbidden at all times to approach the Abbey by that way, so the sacred spot was almost as private as though it had been an appendage of the Abbey itself, as it had been in the old times. Mirk lay quite out of the high-road, so that no stranger “stretching his legs,” while the coach changed horses, ever strolled into its God's-acre to spend a profitless five minutes amid its solemn records; nor, indeed, was there anything in the graveground, whatever might have been in the church, to attract such persons, in the way of monument or effigy. Yet the humble graves were all well kept; not broken or dinted in, as one too often sees them in such places; nor did the head-stones lean this way and that, as though they strove to wrench up the very mounds they were set to mark; nor were the long rank grasses and the nettles permitted to overgrow the spot, and hide it from the sun. Upon every slab, however, save one, time was doing its work, covering with moss and lichen the gray surface, and filling up the letters on the stones—-just as in the hearts of the survivors it was healing the sense of loss, and effacing the memory of the departed one. The sole exception was the stone which commemorated Sir Robert's death. His marble cross was without speck or flaw. It stood in the western corner, in a little plot of garden-ground of its own, and beside it was a vacant space, left there by his widow's desire, that she might herself be laid there when God's good time should come.

It is the evening of the day upon which Master Walter got up so early, and my Lady has come, as usual, to her husband's tomb. Her hand is resting on the top of it, whereon she has just hung a chaplet of fresh-gathered flowers; but her look is fixed upon the western sky, where the glory of the sunken sun yet lingers. It may be but a simple faith that associates Heaven with the sky, but it is a very natural one. My Lady's soul was longing to be at rest somewhere beyond those quiet clouds which flecked that golden deep. Death is not so invariably hateful to us as the divines would paint it; it has no terrors for the Good—nay, sometimes not for the Bad either—while to the Wretched it would often be more welcome than the dawn. “If I could only 'fall asleep,' as is said of the saints,” thought my Lady, “here, and at this instant, how well for all would it be! Some only live for others, they say, but the best that could possibly happen to all I love would be that I should be laid in my grave. And some have died for others, as God knows I would die for any one of my dear ones, and yet it would be sin in me to die. Ah, husband, husband! thou that liest here under the flowers and the sky, I would to Heaven that I could lie down beside thee now, and never wake! I trust thou dost not know this thing that troubles me, and threatens mine and thine, or thy dear heart would be wrung with pity, although thou wert an angel and in eternal bliss. And but that the Almighty has fixed his canon against self-slaughter—— Those were happy days in which I first read that!” mused she, interrupting herself, and carried involuntarily into another current of thought; “we read it together, you and I, Robert. My new life was just beginning then; never had pupil such a kindly teacher as thou wert. I can bear to think of that; but of thy love, thy noble generous love, thy patient tenderness——— Spare me, great Heaven! I did so worship this dead man, and now I live alone; and yet I would not have him here alive, to know what I know, to feel what I feel, to dread what I dread—no, not though we should be permitted to live together for years, and die within the selfsame hour, as I used to pray we might. I thank thee, merciful God, that I am bearing this heavy cross alone; give me strength to carry it, and suffer me to do so—if it please thee—to the end, alone. It is my fault, husband; all mine. When you pressed me to marry you, and I said 'No,' I should have said it more firmly. We were not fit for one another.—No, no; not that! I will not say that. You made me what I am; a wife fit for yourself, I do believe; not good, like you—not wise, like you—but one who was a faithful and true helpmate, and with whom you were content. If you could make a sign to me from the earth, or in the air, this moment, I should not be afraid but that it would be one of love. If you, perchance, have come to know every thought in my heart that was in your time—or if you have read it since you died—or if you read it now—still I should not be afraid! I will endeavour to do my duty still; but ah! how foolish are they who say we always know what is our duty! O Robert, what is mine?”

She wrung her hands in pitiful distraction, and throwing herself down by the graveside, whispered, as though to the deaf ear beneath: “The sea has given up its dead to shame me, and thy children, because of me. What is there for me to do for them except to die?”

“Hollo, missus! what's wrong wi' you?” inquired a deep hoarse voice. “Drunk or sober, I never could abide seeing a woman cry.”

At such a time and place, the sudden and unexpected interruption might well have sent a shudder, to any woman's heart, and it was no wonder that my Lady trembled in every limb. But she gathered herself together with a great effort, and drawing her thick crape veil over her face, arose, and steadily confronted the intruder.

“Why, it's my Lady herself!” cried the new-comer derisively—“the party as I've promised myself a good look at before I left these diggings. And, dam'me, but now I'll have it. If I'm anyways rude, you will please to put it down to the brandy in which I have been drinking to the very good health of the big black horse. Now, don't be so cursedly proud; your son and I—not Sir Richard, for he's a—— Well, you're his mother, so I won't say what I was agoing to about him; but Master Walter, he and I are great friends.—Now, why do you wince? He ain't so high and mighty but that he can borrow money of your humble servant; but there—there's no obligation in that, for I love the lad. He's like—like a dear friend of mine, who was drowned in the sea, years and years ago. Lord, how you do tremble! Why, I'm the last man in the world to hurt a woman, bless you. My nature is altogether soft where they're concerned; and if it were not so, there was a woman once, my Lady, drowned and dead—the same as I was speaking of—for whose sake every woman since has been in my eyes sort of sacred-like; that is, unless I was in drink.”

It was painfully evident to my Lady that the person who was speaking to her was in the unhappy condition he had just referred to, for he lurched from side to side until he had bethought him of steadying himself by the marble cross; but there was a sort of pathos in his voice, too, which was not the mere maudlin tenderness of the drunkard. If he had not been drunk, he might not have been tender, but there was evidently genuine feeling in the man, which seemed to deepen as he went on. “Now, though you do not speak, I know you're sorry for me. If I should lift your veil—there, I'm not agoing to do it—I am sure you would have a tear for a poor fellow who has been knocked about the world for three parts of his life, and has not made a single friend—not one, not one; and if he went back home, who would not see a face he knew—it is so long ago that he was there—and who needs a woman's voice to comfort him if ever a man did.”

“What's all this to me, sir?” asked my Lady in low and broken tones. “I wish to be left alone here—by this grave.”

“What—is—all—this—to you?” returned the man with vindictive deliberation, “Have you no heart, then, you proud woman, like your eldest son?” Then once more altering his manner, he continued: “Now, do not be angry with me, or you may be sorry for it, but rather pity me. This grave contains what is dear to you, it seems; but you have those alive who love you also! Now, I have not even a grave. The only creature on earth who ever loved me—and I loved her too, ah how dearly, though I could not keep even then from drink—she lies buried beneath the stormy waves. I cannot come, as you can, to this tomb, and say: 'Here she sleeps,' and weep over it, and be sorry for my sins, for I know not where, in all the waste of ocean, her bones may lie. So, for many years I never looked upon the sea without the sense that I was looking upon one great grave. Am I speaking truth or not?”

He stopped and clutched her by the arm, and fiercely bade her tell him if she believed his words or no.

“I do believe you, sir,” returned my Lady firmly. “Beneath your bronzed and bearded face, I see your woes at work, and I am sorry for you.”

“Thank you, Lady; you have a pleasant and kind voice, with music in it such as I have not heard for many a day. You are sorry for me, but you know not half my woes; I have never told them to any human ear; although at times, when I have been all alone—upon the treeless prairie, not knowing whether I was on the right track or lost, or on the mountain-top in strange and savage lands, and chiefly when a solitary man on shipboard, keeping watch while others slept—then have I spoken of these things aloud, and asked of Heaven why it used me so. But now—as some black cloud will overpass a mighty plain, and never shed a drop, but presently, on coming on a little valley fenced with round green hills, will straight, dissolve in rain, so I, who have been so silent for so long, am moved to speak by you. What magic is this you bear about you, woman? Let me see your face.”

“There is no need for that, sir,” answered my Lady, stepping back, and motioning with her arm with dignity. “The magic of which you speak lies only in a feeling heart and an attentive ear. If it is any comfort to you to tell your story, I will gladly listen to it.”

“Yes, it seems to be a comfort,” replied the other thoughtfully, “although I never cared to speak of it before. You see me, Lady, now, a brawling, drunken wretch—upon whose reckless soul there may be murder, to-morrow or next day, as like as not—but anyhow a broken man. I was not always thus. When I was young, I was a hopeful and hard-working lad enough—only a little thoughtless. I was honest, too, notwithstanding that the law and I fell out; but I was fond of jovial company and good liquor, and what I got at sea—for I had a smack of my own at Bleamouth—that I spent very quickly on shore. If I had had a wife, or even a mother, I think it might have been different; but I had no relations, or at least none who were my friends. I could not bear advice, and much less interference and dictation, and so, you see, I was alone in the world—until I met with Lucy Meade—— You shiver, my Lady. Am I keeping you too long in the night-air?”

Lady Lisgard shook her head, and murmured: “No; go on.”

“'Tis thirty years ago this very year—that's many thousand days, and tens of thousand leagues have I sailed since then—and yet, I swear, it seems but yesterday I crossed those water-meadows with my gun—for I was after moorfowl—and came upon her cottage on the Blea. White-walled, white-roofed—for in those parts they paint them so—it nestled under a rocky hill, crested with heather; and in front the river ran, swollen with recent rains, through a broad weedy flat, and so, between the rounded sand-hills, to the sea. Before the cottage was a porch with honeysuckles trained upon it, and one full-flowering fuchsia upon either side. Then, as I drew near, I saw her sitting in the porch mending her father's net. Ah, Heaven, I see her now!”

The speaker paused and sighed; but looking out into the viewless air, as if upon some picture hung in space, he did not mark my Lady start and clasp her hands, as though some dreadful thing had come upon her suddenly, against which none could help her but only God alone.

“It is a story, Lady Lisgard, that you doubtless know,” continued the man, “for even among lords and ladies love will come. I asked her for a drink of water, and she brought me with it Hope, Resolve, Repentance—I know not what. From that moment forth, I lived my life anew. Then the next day, and the next, I sought the cottage; and when I had won my way with Lucy—that was her name, my Lady—did I tell you?—I pleaded my cause with the old fisherman, her father—her mother being already ours—but for a long time in vain.

“She was his only child, his only prop and stay, and he was proud of her, as well he might have been, for she was gentle of speech as you yourself or any lady born, and scholarly and wise beyond her humble state, and, young as she was, already had had many a suitor; but she had never loved but me. 'Tis like enough you cannot fancy that; but then my former self was not like this.” He pointed to his heart with a scornful gesture, as though something loathsome had taken the place of what had wont to be there.

“Besides, the fairest, purest creature upon earth was she, and she took all things for pure. Not that there was much against me either, except that I loved good liquor; besides, I only drank for pleasure then, and now—— But let that be. Well, we were married. We lived with the old couple at the cottage, as Lucy wished, partly for their sakes, partly, as I have often thought since then, for mine—that I might be kept out of bad company, such as there was plenty of at Bleamouth at that time —poachers, smugglers, and idlers of all sorts. But this was done too late. I have said that the Law and I fell out: that was for poaching —and Curse the law, say I, which rich men make for the poor perforce to break. I never poached after I married, but before that time I had shot a hare or two; and once—but months ago—there had been a fray with keepers, and I had clubbed my gun, and struck my hardest, like the rest. There had been broken bones on both sides, but the matter had blown over, as I thought, when all of a sudden I received certain news that I was marked for one of the offenders, and that men were coming to take me from my Lucy's arms to jail. I told her this, for I had kept nothing from her all along, and I knew that she had courage, or she would never have married such a man as me; but I forgot, in my selfish roughness, that it is one thing to be brave in things that concern one's self, and another to be able to bear to see others suffer. 'Ah, Heaven!' exclaimed she, 'but this will kill my father! To have his honest house entered by men in search of felons, and to see his daughter's husband with the gyves upon him—that will be his death, I know.' The auld wife said so likewise.

“They were right, I think, for when we came to break the thing to him, and warn him of what might happen, although all was said to excuse what I had done, and to soften the consequences that might come of it, he raved like one distracted. 'Let him leave my cottage!' cried he; 'he has worked mischief enough already; he has robbed me of my daughter's love, and now he would take from me my good name. Let him leave this honest roof!' 'But where he goes, I must go, father,' replied Lucy, with her arms about the old man's neck; and in the end he was brought to see that it must be so. So I changed my name to that of Derrick, which I bear now, and fled from home to a great seaport, and there, on board an emigrant-ship bound for the other side of the world, took passage not only for myself and wife, but for her parents. It was agreed that all were to begin life again in a strange land, so that I, too, might begin it once more with that fair start which I had lost in my own country. Thus the poor old man and his wife were torn from the comfortable home that had sheltered them for half a century, and forced in their old age to cross the seas. No, not to cross them: would to Heaven they might have been suffered so to do! It was ordained that I, who had thus far caused their wretchedness, should also be the means of their death. A most terrible storm overtook us at midnight, while yet in sight of lights on English land, and in the midst of it our vessel sprung a leak. I knew that I had a brave woman for my wife, but then I found she was a heroine; I knew my Lucy was good as she was fair, but then she proved herself an angel. There were men on board who screamed and wailed like children. She never uttered a cry or shed a tear. She felt that she was going to heaven with all she loved (for she always thought the best of every one), and therefore death had no terrors for her. But I—I felt myself a murderer. I did what I could to save the two old people, and got them into the only boat that left the ship; but it had not parted from us twice its length, before it capsized before our eyes. Lucy had refused to leave me, and when the vessel began to sink, I lashed her to a spar, and then myself; and so for a little time we floated. But the great waves drenched us through and through, and dashed upon us so that we had hardly time to breathe. The spar was not large enough for both our weights, which sank it too low in the water; and so I secretly unloosed the cords that fastened me, and clambered to my Lucy's side, and kissed her cold wet cheek, and whispered: 'Fare well, Lucy.'”

Here the speaker paused, and covered his rough face. My Lady, too, was deeply moved. For near a minute, neither spoke. Then the man resumed: “I slipped into the sea, and struck out aimlessly enough, but with the instinct of a swimmer. Fool that I was to wish to live!” Again he paused; but this time, to mutter an execration.

“And did not all your care and unselfish love suffice to save her?” asked the listener tenderly.

“No, Lady. She was drowned. I never expected otherwise in such a sea. The whole ship's company were lost, except myself. When nearly spent, I came upon a huge piece of the wreck, and held on to it till daylight, when I found myself at sea. I would to God that it had not been so! I was nearer Heaven at that time than I have ever been since, and I ought to have perished then, when all which made life precious had already gone: it would have been far better to have died with her, than to live without her. But I did live. After two days and three nights of hunger and thirst, a vessel picked me up, a sodden mass of rags, half-dead and half-mad. They nursed me and made me well—it was a cruel kindness—and after many days, I was able to tell them what had happened. 'Ay, then,' said they, 'the pilot was right who came to us off Falmouth. It was the North Star that went to pieces in the storm; you are the sole survivor, man, of all on board. Nothing came on shore that night, or could have come on such a coast as that, save spars and corpses.'”

There was silence for a minute's space: the strong man's chest laboured in vain to give him breath for utterance; in vain his horny hand dashed the big tears from his brown cheeks; they still rained on.

“Alas, poor man!” said my Lady, in a broken and pitiful voice, “I feel for you from my very soul. And when you found your three-weeks' bride was dead—I think you said you had married her but three weeks—what then became of you?”

“What matters?” asked the man half-angrily, “It mattered nothing even to myself. The vessel took me—it was all one to me whither she was bound—to New South Wales. And in the New World I did indeed begin a new life—but it was a far worse one than in the old, I was reckless, hopeless already, and I was not long in becoming Godless. When that is said, a man's history is the same, wherever he lives, whatever he does, and however he ends.”

He stamped his foot upon the ground, as though he would keep down some rising demon, and his voice once more resumed the hoarseness it had exchanged for something almost plaintive throughout his story.

“Ralph, Ralph,” began my Lady reprovingly, and touching his rough sailor's sleeve with her gloved hand——

“And how the devil should you know my name is Ralph?” interrupted the other in blank amazement.

“My maid, Mary Forest, told me it was Ralph,” returned my Lady calmly.

“Did she? Well, that's no reason why you should call me by it. However, since you seem to feel so unexpected an interest in your humble servant, I will make bold to ask a favour of you.” His manner was rough and defiant as ever now, like that of a sturdy vagrant soliciting alms of a defenceless woman.

“You are angry with yourself,” said my Lady quietly, “for having given way to feelings which do you honour; that is a base sort of regret indeed. You try to persuade yourself that I have affected a sympathy which I did not feel, but you do not succeed. I cannot but be interested in one who, with all his faults, has certainly in the hour of death and danger behaved nobly, and who must, I feel assured, have the seeds of good in him yet, despite his wild and despairing talk.”

“No, woman, I have not,” returned the man with vehemence. “Dismiss that from your mind at once. Ralph Derrick is no hypocrite, whatever he is, and he tells you now that he is a lost man, in the sense which such as you understand it. I don't know why I have spoken to you as I have done just now—some springs of feeling that I had deemed were quite dried up flowed at your voice as they have not done these thirty years—but don't imagine that I am soft-hearted. I am not a bad fellow when I'm sober, and not put out; but then I'm seldom sober, and I'm very easily put out. Your son, Sir Richard, has put me out, for one. I should be sorry for him if he and I had much to do with one another.—But there, you need not turn so pale; for, for your sake—and for Master Walter's sake, who has got my Lucy's eyes, and look, and voice, God bless him—Sir Richard is safe from me; albeit I have let fly a bullet before now at men who have wronged me less than he has done—an insolent young devil! It was a man like him, one of your landowners, forsooth, whose persecution drove me from my native shore, and drowned my wife and the old couple. Damn all such tyrants, says Ralph Derrick”——

It was difficult to associate the depressed and solemn speaker of a few minutes back with this passionate and lawless man, his huge fingers opening and shutting in nervous excitement, his eyeballs suffused with blood, and each hair of his vast beard, as it seemed, bristling with vengeful fury.

“You were saying that you wished to ask a favour of me, Mr Derrick?” interposed my Lady quietly. “What is it I can do for you?”

“Well, you can do this,” returned he roughly: “you can cease to set your waiting-maid, Mary, against me, as you have hitherto done. I am not a bad match for her, as she knows, in point of money; and if she finds herself able to put up with little starts of temper, and not to grudge me a drop o' drink at times, why, what is that to you?”

“Have you told her, may I ask, of what you have been telling me, Mr Derrick?”

“Yes; at least I told her I was a widower; I never felt a call to tell her more; she would not understand, look you. She asked me what this leaden locket was I wear about my neck, with this poor broken piece of stick in it, and something withered clinging to it still, and I told her it was a charm against the ague. Now, you—I'll wager you can tell me what it holds.”

“No, not I. How should I know?” inquired my Lady hurriedly.

“You do know, anyway. This fellow is not the sort of man to carry charms, you think; and all that's sacred to him in the world or out of it hangs on his love that's drowned. This, then, must be some token—were there not fuchsias upon either side the porch where first they met? There, now, you have it, I can see.”

“You plucked, perhaps, a piece of fuchsia when you plighted troth,” murmured my Lady.

“Ay, when we plighted troth,” answered the other mournfully; “and breaking a twig in twain, all blossoming then, but now—see, dried to dust—each kept a half. I have seen far up the hills in Mexico a piece of the true Cross, that's held to be the richest possession that the Church calls her own in those parts; well, that's not sure; it may be or it mayn't be what they term it; but this poor twig has never been out of my sight or reach, and so I kiss and worship this, my relic, as no devotee can do.—Now, what would Mary Forest say to that? She is not like my Lucy; no, indeed, no more than I am like the Ralph of those old days; and if she were, should I be fit for her? My Lucy married to a drunken, gambling ruffian! Tis blasphemy to think upon it. But as for this wench, your waiting-maid, she and I are suited well enough. She wants a husband, and is willing to take me; while I, who have been tossed so long on the stormy billows of life, shall be glad to come to anchor. It is you only—she told me so herself—who stand in the way.”

“And would you have me, then, advise this woman—being my faithful friend as well as my servant—to unite her fortunes with a man who, from his own lips I learn, is hopeless, reckless, Godless, a drunkard and a gambler”——

“Hell and Furies!” broke forth the other impatiently, “will you dare to use what I have just now told you against myself! Beware, beware, proud woman, how you cross a desperate man! Since my life is worthless, as you paint it, you may be sure that I shall hold the risk of losing it lighter than better men: there is nothing that I dare not do to those who cross me.”

“I have no fear for myself, sir, and least of all things, Ralph Derrick, do I fear death,” answered my Lady calmly. “Yet willingly I promise that I will never breathe one syllable to human ear of what you have said to-night.”

“So far so well, my Lady. When I found you here, I was on my way to court your waiting-woman, but she does not expect me. She has written me her answer 'Yes' or 'No' before this, and I shall get it to-morrow in London: it was agreed between us she should do so. I was to have started to town this afternoon, but I overslept myself—not but that I got up early enough, as Master Walter will witness—and missed the train from Dalwynch. I am going thither to-night; but, in the meantime, I thought I could come back and take a farewell kiss from Mary, and her 'Yes' from her own lips. I will receive no other answer, and if such should reach me, I shall know from whom it comes. The matter is in your hands, I know; come, let us part friends.”

“God forbid we should part enemies,” replied my Lady fervently; “I will wrong you in nothing, but be assured I shall do my duty at all hazards.”

“And be assured I shall have my way, Lady Lisgard, at all risks,” returned the other grimly. “Are you too proud to take my hand at parting?”

For a single instant, my Lady hesitated; then reaching out her fingers, they met his own stretched out at fullest length, for the tomb lay between them. They shook hands across Sir Robert Lisgard's grave.