James Payn

“ Balfour," said he, in a coaxing voice, "come and look at your treasure. It sparkles in the light of my lantern like gold, and you shall have it all if you please; I do not wish to share it with you."
"So you take me for a madman, do you? Look again; look fixedly upon me, Solomon Coe. You do not recognize me even yet? I do not wonder. It is not you that are dull, but I that am so changed by wrong and misery. My own mother does not know me, nor the woman of whom you robbed me nineteen years ago. Yes, you know me now. I am Richard Yorke!" ”

“ Solomon seated himself upon the edge of the pit, with his legs hanging over, and began to peer and feel about him.
"Take care what you are at," cried Balfour, eagerly; "you may slip down and kill yourself, sliding along like that."
Solomon laughed contemptuously. "Never fear, Sir; I have had too many mischances with mines to fear them. I have fallen down worse places, and been shut up in others far deeper and darker than Wheal Danes, without food or candle, for a week, and yet lived through it. The shaft has not yet been dug, I reckon, as will prove—Oh, here's the torch." ”

“ Then I bid more and more; but Carew will neither sell nor let; and my money grows and grows in vain. I tell you I have laid by a fortune only to pour into his hand. It is ready for him to-night; there would be no haggling, no asking for time—it would be paid him in hard cash. How long, thought I, will this madman balk me with his whim? He will die some day in his cups, or break his neck in hunting, and I shall surely come in with my offer to his heir, and have my way at last, and win my prize. But now, after all my patience and my pains, I am overmatched by a Parson and a Boy. ”

“ You vagabond! you scoundrel!"
"You will be sorry for having said those words some day," said Richard, hoarsely; he was choking with rage, and yet it was necessary to restrain himself. He felt that this man would presently forbid him his house—would separate him from his Harry forever; and that would be like tearing out his heart-strings. Always audacious, there was nothing that he was not now prepared to say or do to avert this. "I tell you, Mr. Trevethick, this letter is full of lies, or rather it is written by a madman. I am not a bastard; I am not a pauper. ”

“ Richard was more human than he would fain believe himself to be. Though he had gone to bed so inexorable of purpose, it had been somewhat shaken through the long hours of a night in which he had slept but little, and waked to think on what his feverish dreams had dwelt upon—the fate of his unhappy foe, perishing slowly beside his useless treasure. More than once, indeed, the impulse had been strong upon him that very morning to send word anonymously where Solomon was to be found to the police at Plymouth. Remorse had not as yet become chronic with him, but it seized him by fits and starts. ”

“ A yearning to behold and embrace that mother who had done and suffered so much for his sake took possession of Richard's soul. His heart had been steeled against her when he found harbored under her roof the objects of his rage and loathing; but he felt now that that must have come to pass with some intention of benefit to himself. The very truth, indeed, flashed upon him that she entertained some plan of frustrating his revenge against them, with the idea of protecting him from the consequences that were likely to ensue from it; and he forgave her, while he hated his foes the more. ”

“ A rat in the water-rushes, or a stoat pushing through the undergrowth, would have announced itself in a different fashion. Again the sound was heard, and this time it was no longer the crackling of a twig, but the breaking of a branch; then cautious footsteps fell upon the frosty leaves, and, with a light leap on the bank that fringed the copse, the poacher stood in the open.
That such he was, Yorke had no doubt whatever; the moonlight streamed full upon him, and showed him to be none of the Crompton keepers, unless, indeed, he was disguised. ”

“ Youth and beauty are not dead because Richard Yorke is dead, or as good as dead. The name of this girl is Agnes Aird, a painter's daughter, who is also a teacher of his art. The lad is her father's pupil, and has learned beneath his roof a lesson not included in the artistic course; you may know that by the way in which his eyes devour the girl, the intonation of his voice when he addresses her, the silent pressure of the arm on which her fingers rest. Charles Coe is in love with Agnes, and in all his studies of perspective beholds her, a radiant figure beckoning him on to a happy future. ”

“ They were never to see the world, nor partake of its coarse and brutal pleasures—the only ones they cared for, or perhaps had experienced—any more. How bare, and desolate, and wretched was the prospect! There was no living thing in sight; only the wild moorland streams hurried by, as if themselves desirous to escape from the barren solitude. Not a tree was to be seen save Bergen Wood, which Richard's companion indicated to him, as they neared it, by a movement of the eyelid. It had been the tomb of many a convict, who had striven for freedom, and found death. ”

“ Of course you'll lie; a lie or two is nothing to one like you. But here's the proof. The padlock has been opened, the money taken. Who did it? Who could have done it, except him, or you?"
"As I am a living woman, father, as I hope for heaven," answered Harry, earnestly, "I did not do it, and I do not know who did."
"You didn't, and you don't! The thing's incredible. Reach here that Bible." He still held her by the wrist. "You shall swear that, and be damned forever! What! you never told that villain where my money lay?"
"I did tell Mr. Yorke that, father. Pray, pray, be patient. ”

“ It was at least a week before Solomon Coe could be induced to open his lips before Richard, beyond the utterance of a few pithy sentences; not that the smouldering embers of jealousy had been fanned in the mean time—for Richard had been prudence itself in his behavior to Harry—but because the miner could not comprehend the young fellow, and therefore distrusted him. The light and airy manners, which were as natural to Richard as was John Trevethick's ponderous cunning or his own self-satisfied reticence, seemed to Solomon mere affectation, and even his appearance effeminate and dandified ”

“ Hard Fate was softened for a while toward it's life-long victim; and side by side sat the two bereaved women, each striving to comfort the other, after woman's fashion, by painting in its brightest colors that dead Past which both deplored. Begotten of their common sorrow, Love sprang up between them, and on one side confidence; and into Mrs. Basil's hungry ears Harry, for the first time, poured the story of her courtship. Richard's death had cemented between them the bond which it would seem to have destroyed. The fatal letter lay open on Harry's lap, but the envelope had fallen on the floor. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXII. BROODING. Not a syllable of the judge's exhortation was lost upon the prisoner at the bar. He listened to it as attentively as one who is waiting for the thunder listens to the muffled menace that precedes it, and the fall of each big drop of rain. When the words of doom smote upon his ear a solemn hush succeeded them; and then one piteous, agonized shriek, and a dull fall in the gallery above.
"This way," said a warder, sharply; and Richard was seized by the arm, and hurried through the trap-door, and down the stairs, by the way he had come. ”

“ He would never stand in the prisoner's dock, or be consigned again to stone walls. The gossips should have a dead man's face to gaze at, and welcome; they might make what sport they pleased of that, but not again of his living agony. Then, instead of his being Solomon's murderer, he would be his victim. To judge by his present feeling, thought Richard, bitterly, this man would not enjoy his triumph even then. Revenge, as his mother had once told him, was like a game of battle-door—it is never certain who gets the last stroke. ”

“ Even the old, who so far from the East have traveled that they have well-nigh forgotten their priesthood, feel the sacred longing; in their sluggish blood there still beats a pulse in spring-time, as the sap stirs in the ancient tree; but the young turn to the open fields with rapture, and drink the returning sunbeams in like wine. To draw breath beneath the broad sky is to them an intoxication, and the very air kisses their cheek like the red lips of love.
With his face set ever southward or westward, Richard Yorke has traveled afoot for days, nor yet has tired ”

“ In the mean time Carew and his stags swept up the park like a whirlwind, and presently, coming to a coppice, the frightened creatures dashed into it, doubtless for covert, where wheel and rein and antler, tangling with trunk and branch, soon brought them to a full stop.
"Good lad!" exclaimed Carew, as Yorke hurried up to help him; "you are a good plucked one, you are; you shall keep the lodge, if you will, instead of that lily-livered scoundrel who was too frightened to move. Oh, I ask pardon; you are a gentleman, are you?" ”

“ No, not he—though the gallows loomed before him, though hell yawned for him, he would slake his thirst in the life-blood of that perjured villain; and as for her, he would drag her by the hair to look upon her father's corpse. Where was she? Ah, with Solomon upon the castled rock; and see!—he had pushed him from the edge, and there he hung exactly as he himself had hung when Harry had preserved him! How long would a man hold on like that, even a strong man like Coe, on such a narrow ledge, with the gulls screaming about him? ”

“ You must forgive me, Mr. Yorke," added Parson Whymper, dryly; "but you ought to know that when a man has lost his own self-respect, he is, naturally averse to the profession of independence in another."
"If you deem yourself a dependent, Mr. Chaplain," replied Yorke, bitterly, "you still permit yourself some frankness."
"Yes; that is one of the few virtues which are practiced at Crompton.
You will find me speak the truth."
There was irony in Parson Whymper's tone; and yet the young man felt that he was not the subject of its cynicism. ”

“ Richard felt powerless as a child, and could have cried like a child—not from pain, though he was in great pain, but from vexation and rage. It was maddening to find himself thus physically subjugated by one whom he so utterly despised.
"Keep a civil tongue in your head, cock-sparrow," growled the giant, "lest I wring your neck. You're a nice one to talk of lying; you, with your tales of son and heirship to the Squire, and your offers of copper-mines for the asking! Who told me how I had been fooled? Why, Carew himself! ”

“ A muffled exclamation, half of admiration, half of awe, broke from the circling crowd as, the ladder planted, Richard was seen descending it torch in hand. No other man followed; none had volunteered, and he had asked for no companion. They watched him, as the countrymen of those who had formerly worked Wheal Danes might have watched Curtius when he leaped into the gulf; and as in his case, when they saw the ladder removed, and the light grow dim, and finally die out before their eyes, it seemed that the pit had closed on Richard—that he was swallowed up alive. ”

“ If fury could avail to set you free, your mother would be as the tigress robbed of her young. It is an easy thing enough to fume and foam; it is hard to have to clasp the knees of those whom you despise, in vain."
"He refused you, then—this man?"
"He did, Richard. He told me—what I had not learned from you; I do not say it to reproach you, dear—what it was that had so long detained you at Gethin. He mentioned, in coarsest terms, your love for Harry, and how you had misrepresented yourself to Trevethick as the heir of Crompton in order to win her. ”

“ Her manner and tone were hostile; but that moved not Richard one whit; the cold and measured tones in which she had alluded to his mother's death angered him, on the other hand, exceedingly. If his mother had died of a broken heart, it was this woman's falsehood that had broken it; and yet she could speak with calmness and unconcern of the loss which had left him utterly forlorn! He forgot all his late remorse; and in his eyes glittered malice and cruel rage.
"I do not fear you," cried she, in answer to this look; "for the wretched have no fear. ”

“ Smoothbore was much too sagacious a man to wish to exercise that privilege. The failure of the witness for the defense had proved the case of the prosecution.
It was Mr. Smoothbore who could now best afford to praise the innocence and candor of the unhappy Harry. Was it not evident that that tender creature had been tampered with, and almost persuaded to perjure herself, for the sake of the prisoner at the bar—almost, but, happily for the ends of justice, not quite persuaded! Her natural love of right had conquered the ignoble passion with which she had been inspired by this unscrupulous man. ”

“ The turnkey by the prisoner's side muttered harshly behind his hand, "They have called on you to plead."
"Not guilty," answered Richard, in a loud, firm voice, and fixing his eyes upon the judge.
A murmur of satisfaction ran softly through the court-house. His hesitation had alarmed the curious folks; they were afraid that he might have pleaded "Guilty," and robbed them of their treat. Not a few of them, and perhaps all the women, were also pleased upon his own account. He was so young and handsome that they could not choose but wish him well, and out of his peril. ”

“ I have only heard it from your grandmother: the counsel for the prosecution is scarcely a reliable authority for the facts of a case."
"And I have only heard the defense," said Yorke. "Let me now, for the first time, know what was urged upon the other side, and so weightily," the young man gloomily added, "that it made my mother an outcast, and myself a disgraced and penniless lad. You see, I know exactly what was the end of it all, so do not fear to shock me."
"There can be no disgrace where one has not one's self to blame," urged the chaplain. ”

“ L'ENVOI. Years have passed since Richard Yorke was laid in the church-yard on the hill at Gethin, close beside his mother, whose bones Harry's pious care had caused to be transported thither.
If aught of things that here befall
Touch a spirit among things divine—
If love has force to move us there at all,
her ghost was glad. "In time," thought Harry, "I too shall lie by his side, at last, once more."
Old Trevethick's prophecy was accomplished in the almost fabulous success that attended the working of Wheal Danes. ”

“ Often had he done so to Harry—like another Othello (and almost as swarthy) narrating his adventures to his Desdemona—but never had she been so pleased to listen as now, when she needed but to seem to hear, and, without the penalty of reply, could feed her eyes upon young Richard's listening face. It is hard when, in the race for woman's favor, one has to waste one's breath in making the running for one's rival.
And yet the talk of Solomon Coe was well worth listening to. ”

“ Above all, perhaps, he was actuated by the apprehension that Richard, if refused a hearing, would disclose the secret of Wheal Danes, and wreck the scheme upon which his heart had been set for near half a century. One word from him would divert the unsuspected wealth, over which he had so long gloated in anticipation, into another's hand. But he did not like the young man better for the precious knowledge which he alone shared with him; far otherwise; he hated him for it, and, without being a murderer in his heart, would have gladly welcomed the news that his mouth was closed forever by death. ”