CHAPTER III

Mr. Campbell was not to be moved. He was very anxious, angry, and ill at ease; but he refused to be influenced in any way by this strange communication. It would be some intrusive woman, he said; some busybody—there were many about—who, thinking she might escape being found out in that way, had thought it a grand opportunity of making mischief. He made me a great many apologies for his first hasty words. It was very ill-bred, he said; he was ashamed to think that he had let himself be so carried away; but he would hear nothing of the message itself. The household, however, was in so agitated a state that, after the brothers departed to their business on Monday, I made a pretext of a letter calling me to town, and arranged my departure for the same evening. Both Charlotte and her father evidently divined my motive, but neither attempted to detain me: indeed she, I thought, though it hurt my self-love to see it, looked forward with a little eagerness to my going. This however, explained itself in a way less humiliating when she seized the opportunity of our last walk together to beg me to “do something for her.”

“Anything,” I cried; “anything—whatever man can.”

“I knew you would say so; that is why I have scarcely said I am sorry. I have not tried to stop you. Mr. Temple, I am not shutting my eyes to it, like my father. I am sure that, whoever it was that spoke to you, the warning was true. I want you to go to Colin,” she said abruptly, after a momentary pause, “and let me know the truth.”

“To Colin?” I cried. “But you know how little acquainted we are. It was not he who invited me but—Charley——”

“And I——. You don’t leave me out, I hope,” she said, with a faint smile; “but what could make a better excuse than that you have been here? Mr. Temple, you will go when I ask you? Oh, I do more—I entreat you! Go, and let me know the truth.”

“Of course I shall go—from the moment you bid me, Miss Campbell,” I said. But the commission was not a pleasant one, save in so far that it was for her service.

We were walking up and down by the side of the water, which every moment grew more and more into a blazing mirror, a burnished shield decked with every imaginable colour, though our minds had no room for its beauty, and it only touched my eyesight in coming and going. And then she told me much about Colin which I had not known or guessed—about his inclinations and tastes, which were not like any of the others, and how his friends and his ways were unknown to them. “But we have always hoped this would pass away,” she said, “for his heart is good; oh, his heart is good! You remember how kind he was to me when we met you first. He is always kind.” Thus we walked and talked until I had seen a new side at once of her character and life. The home had seemed to me so happy and free from care; but the dark shadow was there as everywhere, and her heart often wrung with suspense and anguish. We then returned slowly towards the house, still absorbed in this conversation, for it was time that I should go in and eat my last meal at Ellermore.

We had come within sight of the door, which stood open as always, when we suddenly caught sight of Mr. Campbell posting towards us with a wild haste, so unlike his usual circumspect walk, that I was startled. His feet seemed to twist as they sped along, in such haste was he. His hat was pushed back on his head, his coat-tails flying behind him—precipitate like a man pursued, or in one of those panics which take away breath and sense, or, still more, perhaps as if a strong wind were behind him, blowing him on. When he came within speech of us, he called out hurriedly, “Come here! come here, both of you!” and turning, hastened back with the same breathless hurry, beckoning with his hand. “He must have heard something more,” Charlotte said, and rushed after him. I followed a few steps behind. Mr. Campbell said nothing to his daughter when she made up to him. He almost pushed her off when she put her hand through his arm. He had no leisure even for sympathy. He hurried along with feet that stumbled in sheer haste till he came to the Lady’s Walk, which lay in the level sunshine, a path of gold between the great boles of the trees. It was a slight ascent, which tried him still more. He went a few yards along the path, then stopped and looked round upon her and me, with his hand raised to call our attention. His face was perfectly colourless. Alarm and dismay were written on every line of it. Large drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He seemed to desire to speak, but could not; then held up his finger to command our attention. For the first moment or two my attention was so concentrated upon the man and the singularity of his look and gesture, that I thought of nothing else. What did he want us to do? We stood all three in the red light, which seemed to send a flaming sword through us. There was a faint stir of wind among the branches overhead, and a twitter of birds; and in the great stillness the faint lap of the water upon the shore was audible, though the loch was at some distance. Great stillness—that was the word; there was nothing moving but these soft stirrings of nature. Ah! this was what it was! Charlotte grew perfectly pale, too, like her father, as she stood and listened. I seem to see them now: the old man with his white head, his ghastly face, the scared and awful look in his eyes, and she gazing at him, all her faculties involved in the act of listening, her very attitude and drapery listening too, her lips dropping apart, the life ebbing out of her, as if something was draining the blood from her heart.

Mr. Campbell’s hand dropped. “She’s away,” he said. “She’s away”—in tones of despair; then, with a voice that was shaken by emotion—“I thought it was, maybe, my fault. By times you say I am getting stupid.” There was the most heartrending tone in this I ever heard—the pained humility of old age, confessing a defect, lit up with a gleam of feverish hope that in this case the defect might be a welcome explanation.

“Father, dear,” cried Charlotte, putting her hand on his arm—she had looked like fainting a moment before, but recovered herself—“It may be only a warning. It may not be desperate even now.”

All that the old man answered to this was a mere repetition, pathetic in its simplicity. “She’s away, she’s away!” Then, after a full minute’s pause, “You mind when that happened last?” he said.

“Oh, father! oh, father!” cried Charlotte. I withdrew a step or two from this scene. What had I, a stranger, to do with it? They had forgotten my presence, and at the sound of my step they both looked up with a wild eager look in their faces, followed by blank disappointment. Then he sighed, and said, with a return of composure, “You will throw a few things into a bag, and we’ll go at once, Chatty. There is no time to lose.”

They went up with me to town that night. The journey has never seemed to me so long or so fatiguing, and Mr. Campbell’s state, which for once Charlotte in her own suspense and anxiety did not specially remark, was distressing to see. It became clear afterwards that his illness must have been coming on for some time, and that he was not then at all in a condition to travel. He was so feeble and confused when we reached London that it was impossible for me to leave them, and I was thus, without any voluntary intrusion of mine, a witness of all the melancholy events that followed. I was present even at the awful scene which the reader probably will remember as having formed the subject of many a newspaper article at the time. Colin had “gone wrong” in every way that a young man could do. He had compromised the very existence of the firm in business; he had summed up all his private errors by marrying a woman unfit to bear any respectable name. And when his father and sister suddenly appeared before him, the unfortunate young man seized a pistol which lay suspiciously ready to his hand, and in their very presence put an end to his life. All the horror and squalor and dismal tragedy of the scene is before me as I write. The wretched woman, whom (I felt sure) he could not endure the sight of in Charlotte’s presence, the heap of letters on his table announcing ruin from every quarter, the consciousness so suddenly brought upon him that he had betrayed and destroyed all who were most dear to him, overthrew his reason or his self-command. And the effect of so dreadful an occurrence on the unhappy spectators needs no description of mine. The father, already wavering under the touch of paralysis, fell by the same blow, and I had myself to bring Charlotte from her brother dead to her father dying, or worse than dying, struck dumb and prostrate in that awful prison of all the faculties. Until Charley arrived I had everything to do for both dead and living, and there was no attempt to keep any secret from me, even had it been possible. It seemed at first that there must be a total collapse of the family altogether; but afterwards some points of consolation appeared. I was present at all their consultations. The question at last came to be whether the “Works,” the origin of their wealth, should be given up, and the young men disperse to seek their fortune as they might, or whether a desperate attempt should be made to keep up the business by retrenching every expense and selling Ellermore. Charley, it was clear to me, was afraid to suggest this dreadful alternative to his sister; but she was no weakling to shrink from any necessity. She made up her mind to the sacrifice without a moment’s hesitation. “There are so many of us—still,” she said; “there are the boys to think of, and the children.” When I saw her standing thus, with all those hands clutching at her, holding to her, I had in my own mind a sensation of despair. But what was that to the purpose? Charlotte was conscious of no divided duty. She was ready to serve her own with every faculty, and shrank from no sacrifice for their sake.

It was some time before Mr. Campbell could be taken home. He got better indeed after a while, but was very weak. And happily for him he brought no consciousness of what had happened out of the temporary suspension of all his faculties. His hand and one side were almost without power, and his mind had fallen into a state which it would be cruel to call imbecility. It was more like the mind of a child recovering from an illness, pleased with, and exacting constant attention. Now and then he would ask the most heartrending questions: what had become of Colin, if he was ill, if he had gone home? “The best place for him, the best place for him, Chatty,” he would repeat; “and if you got him persuaded to marry, that would be fine.” All this Charlotte had to bear with a placid face, with quiet assent to the suggestion. He was in this condition when I took leave of him in the invalid carriage they had secured for the journey. He told me that he was glad to go home; that he would have left London some time before but for Chatty, who “wanted to see a little of the place.” “I am going to join my son Colin, who has gone home before us—isn’t that so, Chatty?” “Yes, father,” she said. “Yes, yes, I have grown rather doited, and very very silly,”15 the old man said, in a tone of extraordinary pathos. “I am sometimes not sure of what I am saying; but Chatty keeps me right. Colin has gone on before; he has a grand head for business; he will soon set everything right—connected,” he added, with a curious sense which seemed to have outlived his other powers, that somehow explanation of Colin’s actions was necessary—“connected with my retirement. I am past business; but we’ll still hope to see you at Ellermore.”

I ought perhaps to say, though at the risk of ridicule, that up to the moment of their leaving London, I constantly met, or seemed to meet—for I became confused after a while, and felt incapable of distinguishing between feeling and fact—the same veiled lady who had spoken to me at Ellermore. Wherever there was a group of two or three people together, it appeared to me that she was one of them. I saw her in advance of me in the streets. I saw her behind me. She seemed to disappear in the distance wherever I moved. I suppose it was imagination—at least that is the most easy thing to say: but I was so convinced at the moment that it was not imagination, that I have hurried along many a street in pursuit of the phantom who always, I need not say, eluded me. I saw her at Colin’s grave: but what need to linger longer on this hallucination, if it was one? From the day the Campbells left London, I saw her no more.