of terror.
“Na, na, that’s not it. He’s well enough. All he bade me say was, ‘Tell mother I’m in trouble, and can’t come home tonight.’”
“Not come home tonight! And what am I to do with Alice? I can’t go on, wearing my life out wi’ watching. He might come and help me.”
“I tell you he can’t,” said the man.
“Can’t, and he is well, you say? Stuff! It’s just that he’s getten like other young men, and wants to go a-larking. But I’ll give it him when he comes back.”
The man turned to go; he durst not trust himself to speak in Jem’s justification. But she would not let him off.
She stood between him and the door, as she said—
“Yo shall not go till yo’ve told me what he’s after. I can see plain enough you know, and I’ll know too, before I’ve done.”
“You’ll know soon enough, missis!”
“I’ll know now, I tell ye. What’s up that he can’t come home and help me nurse? Me, as never got a wink o’ sleep last night wi’ watching.”
“Well, if you will have it out,” said the poor badgered man, “the police have got hold on him.”
“On my Jem!” said the enraged mother. “You’re a downright liar, and that’s what you are. My Jem, as never did harm to any one in his life. You’re a liar, that’s what you are.”
“He’s done harm enough now,” said the man, angry in his turn, “for there’s good evidence he murdered young Carson, as was shot last night.”
She staggered forward to strike the man for telling the terrible truth; but the weakness of old age, of motherly agony, overcame her, and she sank down on a chair, and covered her face. He could not leave her.
When next she spoke, it was in an imploring, feeble, childlike voice.
“O master, say you’re only joking. I ax your pardon if I have vexed ye, but please say you’re only joking. You don’t know what Jem is to me.”
She looked humbly, anxiously up to him.
“I wish I were only joking, missis; but it’s true as I say. They’ve taken him up on charge of murder. It were his gun as were found near th’ place; and one o’ the police heard him quarrelling with Mr. Carson a few days back, about a girl.”
“About a girl!” broke in the mother, once more indignant, though too feeble to show it as before. “My Jem was as steady as”—she hesitated for a comparison wherewith to finish, and then repeated, “as steady as Lucifer, and he were an angel, you know. My Jem was not one to quarrel about a girl.”
“Ay, but it was that, though. They’d got her name quite pat. The man had heard all they said. Mary Barton was her name, whoever she may be.”
“Mary Barton! the dirty hussy! to bring my Jem into trouble of this kind. I’ll give it her well when I see her: that I will. Oh! my poor Jem!” rocking herself to and fro. “And what about the gun? What did ye say about that?”
“His gun were found on th’ spot where the murder were done.”
“That’s a lie for one, then. A man has got the gun now, safe and sound. I saw it not an hour ago.”
The man shook his head.
“Yes, he has indeed. A friend o’ Jem’s, as he’d lent it to.”
“Did you know the chap?” asked the man, who was really anxious for Jem’s exculpation, and caught a gleam of hope from her last speech.
“No! I can’t say as I did. But he were put on as a workman.”
“It’s maybe only one of them policemen, disguised.”
“Nay; they’d never go for to do that, and trick me into telling on my own son. It would be like seething a kid in its mother’s milk; and that th’ Bible forbids.”
“I don’t know,” replied the man.
Soon afterwards he went away, feeling unable to comfort, yet distressed at the sight of sorrow; she would fain have detained him, but go he would. And she was alone.
She never for an instant believed Jem guilty: she would have doubted if the sun were fire, first: but sorrow, desolation, and at times anger, took possession of her mind. She told the unconscious Alice, hoping to rouse her to sympathy; and then was disappointed, because, still smiling and calm, she murmured of her mother, and the happy days of infancy.
XX. MARY’S DREAM—AND THE AWAKENING.
“I saw where stark and cold he lay, Beneath the gallows-tree, And every one did point and say, ”Twas there he died for thee!’
Oh! weeping heart! Oh! bleeding heart! What boots thy pity now? Bid from his eyes that shade depart, That death-damp from his brow!” —”THE BIRTLE TRAGEDY.”
So there was no more peace in the house of sickness except to Alice, the dying Alice.
But Mary knew nothing of the afternoon’s occurrences; and gladly did she breathe in the fresh air, as she left Miss Simmonds’ house, to hasten to the Wilsons’. The very change, from the indoor to the outdoor atmosphere, seemed to alter the current of her thoughts. She thought less of the dreadful subject which had so haunted her all day; she cared less for the upbraiding speeches of her fellow-workwomen; the old association of comfort and sympathy received from Alice gave her the idea that, even now, her bodily presence would soothe and compose those who were in trouble, changed, unconscious, and absent though her spirit might be.
