CHAPTER IX.
Thought, and affliction, passion, Hell itself,
She turns to favour, and to prettiness.
It was on the evening of the day on which the conversation we have related, had occurred between young Wilson and his mother, that Jane, just as she had parted with Erskine, after an unusually delightful walk, and was entering her aunt's door, heard her name pronounced in a low voice. She turned, and saw an old man emerging from behind a projection of the house. He placed his finger on his lips by way of an admonition to silence, and said softly to Jane, "For the love of Heaven, come to my house to-night; you may save life; tell no one, and come after the family is in bed."
"But, John, I do not know the way to your house," replied Jane, amazed at the strange request.
"You shall have a guide, Miss. Don't be afraid; 'tis not like you to be afraid, when there is good to be done; and I tell you, you may save life; and every one that knows me, knows I never tell a lie for any body."
"Well," said Jane, after a moment's pause, "if I go, how shall I find the way?"
"That's what I am afraid will frighten you most of all; but it must be so. You know where Lucy Willett's grave is, on the side of the hill, above the river; there you will find crazy Bet waiting for you. She is a poor cracked body, but there is nobody I would sooner trust in any trouble; besides, she is in the secret already, and there is no help for it."
"But," said Jane, "may I not get some one else to go with me?"
"Not for the wide world. Nothing will harm you."
Jane was about to make some further protestation, when a sound from the house alarmed the man, and he disappeared as suddenly as he had made his entree.
John was an old man, who had been well known to two or three successive generations in the village. He had never had health or strength for hard labour, but had gained a subsistence by making baskets, weaving new seats into old chairs, collecting herbs for spring beer, and digging medicinal roots from the mountains: miscellaneous offices, which are usually performed by one person, where the great principle of a division of labour is yet unknown and unnecessary. A disciple of Gall might, perhaps, have detected in the conformation of the old man's head, certain indications of a contemplative turn of mind, and a feeling heart; but, as we are unlearned in that fashionable science, we shall simply remark, that there was, in the mild cast of his large but sunken eye, and the deep-worn channels of his face, an expression that would lead an observer to think he had felt and suffered; that he possessed the wisdom of reflection, as well as the experience of age; and that he had been accustomed, in nature's silent and solitary places, to commune with the Author of Nature. He inhabited a tenement at some distance from the village, but within the precincts of the town. When the skill of the domestic leeches was at fault, in the case of a sick cow or a wormy child, he was called to a consultation, and the efficacy of the simples he had administered, had sometimes proved so great, as to induce a suspicion of a mysterious charm. But the superstitious belief in witches and magic has vanished with the mists of other times; and the awe of 'John of the Mountain,' as he was called, or for brevity's sake, 'John Mountain,' never outlived the period of childhood.
Jane knew John was honest and kind-hearted, and particularly well disposed to her, for he had occasionally brought her a pretty wild-flower, or an basket of berries, and then he would say, "Ah, Miss Jane, I grow old and forgetful, but the old man can't forget the kindness that's been done to him in days past; you was as gay as a lark then. My poor old bald head! it's almost as bare inside as out; but I shall never forget the time—it was a sorrowful year, we had had a hard winter, the snows drifted on the mountains, and for six weeks I never saw the town, and poor Sarah lying sick at home; and when I did get out, I came straight to your mother's, for she had always a pitiful heart, and an open and a full hand too, and she stocked my alms basket full of provisions. Then you came skipping out of the other room, with a flannel gown in your hand, and your very eyes laughed with pleasure, and when you gave it to me, you said, "It is for your wife, and I sewed every stitch of it, John;" and then you was not bigger than a poppet, and could not speak plain yet. When I got home, and told my old woman, she shook her head, and said, you "was not long for this world;" but I laughed at her foolishness, and asked her, if the finest saplings did not live to make the noblest trees? Thanks to Him that is above, you are alive at this day, and many a wanderer will yet find shelter in your branches."
We trust our readers will pardon this digression, and accept the gratitude of the old man, as a proof that all men's good deeds are not 'written in sand.'
After John's departure, Jane remained for a few moments where he had left her, ruminating on his strange request, when her attention was called to a noise in her aunt's sleeping apartment, and she heard, as she thought, crazy Bet's voice raised to its highest pitch. She passed hastily through the passage, and on opening her aunt's door, she beheld a scene of the greatest confusion. The bed-clothes had been hastily stripped from the bed and strewed on the floor, and Bet stood at the open window with the bed in her right hand. She had, by a sudden exertion of her strength, made an enormous rent in the well-wove home-made tick, and was now quite leisurely shaking out the few feathers that still adhered to it. In her left hand she held a broom, which she dexterously brandished, to defend herself from the interference of Sukey, the coloured servant girl, who stood panic-struck and motionless; her dread of her mistress' vengeance impelling her forward; and her fear of the moody maniac operating upon her locomotive powers, like a gorgon influence. Her conflicting fears had not entirely changed her ethiopian skin, but they had subtracted her colour in stripes, till she looked like Robin Hood's willow wand.
"Why did you not stop her?" exclaimed Jane, hastily passing the girl.
"Stop her, missy? the land's sake! I could as easy stop a flash of lightning! missy must think me a 'rac'lous creature, respecting me to hold back such a harricane."
At Jane's approach Bet dropped the broom, and threw the empty bed-tick at poor Sukey, who shook it off, not, however, till her woolly pate was completely powdered with the lint. "Now, Sukey," screamed Bet with a wild peal of laughter, "look in the glass, and you'll see how white you'll be in heaven; the black stains will all be washed out there!"
"But, Bet," said Jane, "where are the feathers?"
"Where? child," she replied, smiling with the most provoking indifference, "where are last year's mourners? where is yesterday's sunshine, or the morning's fog?"
"Why did you do this, Bet?"
"Do you ask a reason of me?" she replied, with a tone in which sorrow and anger were equally mingled, and then putting her finger to her forehead, she added, "the light is quite out, there is not a glimmering left."
Jane felt that the poor woman was not a subject for reproach; and turning away, she said, "Aunt will be very angry."
"Yes," replied Bet, "she will weep and howl, but she should thank me for silencing some of the witnesses."
"Witnesses, Bet?"
"Yes, child, witnesses; are not moth-eaten garments and corrupted riches witnesses against the rich, the hard-hearted, and close-handed? She should not have denied a bed to my aching head and weary body. She should not have told me, that the bare ground and hard boards were soft and easy enough for a "rantipole beggar."
The recollection of the promise she had given to John now occurred to Jane, and she was deliberating whether or not to speak to Bet about it, when Mrs. Wilson, who had been absent on a visit to one of her neighbours, came in. In her passage through the kitchen, Sukey had hinted to her her loss, and she hastened on to ascertain its extent. Inquiries were superfluous; the empty tick was lying where Sukey had left it, and the feathers which had swelled it almost to bursting, were not. Mrs. Wilson darted forwards towards Bet, on whom she would have wreaked her hasty vengeance, but Bet, aware of her intention, sprang through the window, quick as thought, and so rapid, and as it were, spiritual, was her flight, that a minute had scarcely passed, when the shrill tones of her voice were heard rising in the distance, and they were just able to distinguish the familiar words of her favourite methodist hymn—
"Sinners stand a trembling,
Saints are rejoicing."
Mrs. Wilson turned to Jane, and with that disposition which such persons have when any evil befals them, to lay the blame on somebody, she would have vented her spite on her, but it was too evident that the only part Jane had had in the misfortune was an ineffectual effort to avert it, and the good lady was deprived of even that alleviation of her calamity. This scene, notwithstanding the pecuniary loss sustained by Mrs. Wilson, occasioned Jane a good deal of diversion. Still it was not at all calculated to inspire her with confidence in the guide, whose wild and fantastic humours she knew it to be impossible for any one to control. Her resolution was a little shaken; but, after all, she thought, "It is possible I may find the house without her. I know the course I should take. At any rate, I should be miserable if any evil should come of my neglect of the old man's request. There can be no real dangers, and I will not imagine any."
Still, after the family were all hushed in repose, and Jane had stolen from her bed and dressed herself for her secret expedition, she shrunk involuntarily from the task before her. "I do not like this mystery," said she, mentally; "I wish I had told my aunt, and asked David to go with me, or I might have told Mary Hull. There could have been no harm in that. But it is now too late. John said, I might save life, and I will think of nothing else."
She rose from the bed, where she had seated herself to ponder, for the last time, upon the difficulties before her, crept softly down stairs, passed her aunt's room, and got clear of the house unmolested, except by a slight growl from Brutus, the house-dog, whose dreams she had broken, but, at her well-known kindly patting, and "Lie down Brutus, lie down," he quietly resumed his sleeping posture. Her courage was stimulated by having surmounted one obstacle. The waning moon had risen, and shed its mild lustre over the peaceful scene. "Now," thought Jane, "that I have stirred up my womanish thoughts with a manly spirit, I wonder what I could have been afraid of."
Anxious to ascertain whether she was to have the doubtful aid of crazy Bet's conduct, or trust solely to her own, she pressed onward. To shorten her way to Lucy's grave, and to avoid the possibility of observation, she soon left the public road, and walked along under the shadow of a low-browed hill, which had formerly been the bank of the river, but from which it had receded and left an interval of beautiful meadow between the hill and its present bed. The deep verdure of the meadow sparkled with myriads of fire-flies, that seemed, in this hour of their dominion, to be keeping their merry revels by the music of the passing stream. The way was, as yet, perfectly familiar to Jane. After walking some distance in a straight line, she crossed the meadow by a direct path to a large tree, which had been, in part, uprooted by a freshet, and which now laid across the river, and supplied a rude passage to the adventurous, the tenacity of some of its roots still retaining it firmly in the bank. Fortunately the stream was unusually low, and when our heroine reached the further extremity of the fallen trunk, she sprang without difficulty over the few feet of water between her and the dry sand of the shore.
"That's well done!" exclaimed crazy Bet, in a voice that made the welkin ring, and starting up from the mound. "Strong of heart, and light of foot, you are a fit follower for one that hates the broad and beaten road, and loves the narrow straight way and the high rock. Sit down and rest you," she continued for Jane was out of breath from ascending the steep bank where crazy Bet stood; "sit down, child; you may sit quiet. It is not time for her to rise yet."
"Oh, Bet," said Jane, "if you love me, take those greens off your head; they make you look so wild."
A stouter heart than Jane's would have quailed at Bet's appearance. She had taken off her old bonnet and tied it on a branch of the tree that shaded the grave, and twisted around her head a full leaved vine, by which she had confined bunches of wild flowers, that drooped around her pale brow and haggard face; her long hair was streaming over her shoulders; her little black mantle thrown back, leaving her throat and neck bare. The excitement of the scene, the purpose of the expedition, and the moonlight, gave to her large black eyes an unusual brightness.
To Jane's earnest entreaty she replied, "Child, you know not what you ask. Take off these greens, indeed! Every leaf of them has had a prayer said over it. There is a charm in every one of them. There is not an imp of the evil one that dares to touch me while I wear them. The toad with his glistening eye, springs far from me; and the big scaly snake, that's coiled and ready to dart, glides away from me."
"But," said Jane, in a tone of more timid expostulation, "what have I to guard me, Bet?"
"You!" and as she spoke she stroked Jane's hair back from her pure smooth brow; "have not you innocence? and know you not that is 'God's seal in the forehead' to keep you from all harm. Foolish girl! sit down—I say, she will not rise yet."
Jane obeyed her command, and rallying her spirits, replied, "No, Bet, I am not afraid she will rise. I believe the dead lie very quiet in their graves."
"Yes, those may that die in their beds and are buried by the tolling of the bell, and lie with a merry company about them in the church yard; but, I tell you, those that row themselves over the dark river, never have a quiet night's rest in their cold beds."
"Come," said Jane, impatiently rising, "for mercy's sake, let us go."
"I cannot stir from this spot," replied Bet, "till the moon gets above that tree; and so be quiet, while I tell you Lucy's story. Why, child, I sit here watching by her many a night, till her hour comes, and then I always go away, for the dead don't love to be seen rising from their beds."
"Well, Bet, tell me Lucy's story, and then I hope you will not keep me any longer here; and you need not tell me much, for, you know, I have heard it a thousand times."
"Ah! but you did not see her as I did, when Ashley's men went out, and she followed them, and begged them on her knees, for the love of God, not to fire upon the prisoners; for the story had come, that Shay's men would cover their front with the captives; and you did not see her when he was brought to her shot through the heart, and dead as she is now. She did not speak a word—she fell upon his neck, and she clasped her arms round him; they thought to cut them off, it was so hard to get them loose;—and when they took her from him, (and the maniac laid her hand on Jane's head) she was all gone here. The very day they put him under the green sod, she drowned herself in that deep place, under the mourning willow, that the boys call Lucy's well. And they buried her here, for the squires and the deacons found it against law and gospel too, to give her Christian burial."
Bet told all these circumstances with an expression and action that showed she was living the scene over, while her mind dwelt on them. Jane was deeply interested; and when Bet concluded, she said, "Poor Lucy! I never felt so much for her."
"That's right, child; now we will go on—but first let that tear-drop that glistens in the moonbeam, fall on the grave, it helps to keep the grass green—and the dead like to be cried for;" she added mournfully.
They now proceeded; crazy Bet leading the way, with long and hasty strides, in a diagonal course still ascending the hill, till she plunged into a deep wood, so richly clothed with foliage as to be impervious to the moon-beams, and so choked with underbrush, that Jane found it very difficult to keep up with her pioneer. They soon, however, emerged into an open space, completely surrounded and enclosed by lofty trees. Crazy Bet had not spoken since they began their walk; she now stopped, and turning abruptly to Jane, "Do you know," said she, "who are the worshippers that meet in this temple? the spirits that were 'sometime disobedient,' but since He went and preached to them, they come out from their prison house, and worship in the open air, and under the light of the blessed heavens."
"It is a beautiful spot," said Jane; "I should think all obedient spirits would worship in this sanctuary of nature."
"Say you so;—then worship with me." The maniac fell on her knees—Jane knelt beside her: she had caught a spark of her companion's enthusiasm. The singularity of her situation, the beauty of the night, the novelty of the place, on which the moon now riding high in the heavens poured a flood of silver light, all conspired to give a high tone to her feelings. It is not strange she should have thought she never heard any thing so sublime as the prayer of her crazed conductor—who raised her arms and poured out her soul in passages of scripture the most sublime and striking, woven together by her own glowing language. She concluded suddenly, and springing on her feet, said to Jane, "Now follow me: fear not, and falter not; for you know what awaits the fearful and unbelieving."
Jane assured her she bad no fear but that of being too late. "You need not think of that: the spirit never flits till I come."
They now turned into the wood by a narrow pathway, whose entrance laid under the shadow of two young beech trees: crazy Bet paused—"See ye these, child," said she, pointing to the trees, "I knew two, who grew up thus on the same spot of earth;—so lovingly they grew," and she pointed to the interlacing of the branches—"young and beautiful; but the axe was laid to the root of one—and the other (and she pressed both her hands on her head, and screamed wildly) perished here." A burst of tears afforded her a sadden relief.
"Poor broken-hearted creature!" murmured Jane.
"No, child; when she weeps, then the band is loosened: for" added she, drawing closer to Jane and whispering, "they put an iron band around her head, and when she is in darkness, it presses till she thinks she is in the place of the Tormentor; by the light of the moon it sits lightly. Ye cannot see it; but it is there—always there."
Jane began now to be alarmed at the excitement of Bet's imagination; and turning from her abruptly, entered the path, which, after they had proceeded a few yards, seemed to be leading them into a wild trackless region. "Where are we going Bet?" she exclaimed. "Through a pass, child, that none knows but the wild bird and the wild woman. Have you never heard of the "caves of the mountain?"
"Yes," replied Jane; "but I had rather not go through them to-night. Cannot we go some other way?"
"Nay, there is no other way; follow me, and fear not."
Jane had often heard of the pass called the 'Mountain-Caves,' and she knew it had only been penetrated by a few rash youths of daring and adventurous spirit. She was appalled at the thought of entering it in the dead of night, and with such a conductor; she paused, but she could see no way of escape, and summoning all her resolution to her aid, she followed Bet, who took no note of her scruples. They now entered a defile, which had been made by some tremendous convulsion of nature, that had rent the mountain asunder, and piled rock on rock in the deep abyss. The breadth of the passage, which was walled in by the perpendicular sides of the mountain, was not in any place more than twenty feet; and sometimes so narrow, that Jane thought she might have extended her arms quite across it. But she had no leisure for critical accuracy; her wayward guide pressed on, heedless of the difficulties of the way. She would pass between huge rocks, that had rolled so near together, as to leave but a very narrow passage between them; then grasping the tangled roots that projected from the side of the mountain, and placing her feet in the fissures of the rocks, or in the little channels that had been worn by the continual dropping from the mountain rills, she would glide over swiftly and safely, as if she had been on the beaten highway. They were sometimes compelled, in the depths of the caverns, to prostrate themselves and creep through narrow apertures in the rocks, it was impossible to surmount; and Jane felt that she was passing over immense masses of ice, the accumulation perhaps of a hundred winters. She was fleet and agile, and inspired with almost supernatural courage; she, 'though a woman, naturally born to fears,' followed on fearlessly; till they came to an immense rock, whose conical and giant form rested on broken masses below, that on every side were propping this 'mighty monarch of the scene.'
For the first time, crazy Bet seemed to remember she had a companion, and to give a thought to her safety. "Jane," said she, "go carefully over this lower ledge, there is a narrow foot-hold there; let not your foot slip on the wet leaves, or the soft moss. I am in the spirit, and I must mount to the summit."
Jane obeyed her directions, and when, without much trouble, she had attained the further side of the rock, she looked back for crazy Bet, and saw her standing between heaven and earth on the very topmost point of the high rock: she leant on the branch of a tree she had broken off in her struggle to reach that lofty station. The moon had declined a little from the meridian; her oblique rays did not penetrate the depths where Jane stood, but fell in their full brightness on the face of her votress above. Her head, as we have noticed, was fantastically dressed with vines and flowers; her eyes were in a fine 'frenzy, rolling from earth to heaven, and heaven to earth;' she looked like, the wild genius of the savage scene. and she seemed to breathe its spirit, when, after a moment's silence, she sang, with a powerful and thrilling voice, which waked the sleeping echoes of the mountain, the following stanza:
"Tell them 'I AM,' Jehovah said
To Moses, while earth heard in dread,
And smitten to the heart;
At once above, beneath, around,
All nature, without voice or sound,
Replied, Oh Lord, Thou art!"
In vain Jane called upon her. In vain she entreated her to descend. She seemed wrapt in some heavenly vision; and she stood mute again and motionless, till a bird, that had been scared from its nest in a cleft of the rock, by the wild sounds, fluttered over her and lit on the branch she still held in her hand. "Oh!" exclaimed she, "messenger of love, and omen of mercy, I am content;" and she swiftly descended the sloping side of the rock, which she hardly seemed to touch.
"Now," said Jane, soothingly, "you are rested, let us go on."
"Rested! yes, my body is rested, but my spirit has been the way of the eagle in the air. You cannot bear the revelation now, child. Come on, and do your earthly work."
They walked on for a few yards, when Bet, suddenly turned to the left and ascended the mountain, which was there less steep and rugged than at any place they had passed. At a short distance before her Jane perceived, glimmering through the trees, a faint light. "Heaven be praised!" said she, "that must be John's cottage."
As they came nearer the dog barked; and the old man, coming out of the door, signed to Jane to sit down on a log, which answered the purpose of a rude door-step; and then speaking to crazy Bet, in a voice of authority, which, to Jane's utter surprise, she meekly obeyed—"Take off," said he, "you mad fool, those ginglements from your head, and stroke your hair back like a decent Christian woman; get into the house, but mind you, say not a word to her."
Crazy Bet entered the house, and John, turning to Jane, said, "You are an angel of goodness for coming here to-night, though I am afraid it will do no good; but since you are here, you shall see her."
See her! See what, John?" interrupted Jane.
"That's what I must tell you, Miss; but it is a piercing story to tell to one that looks like you. It's telling the deeds of the pit to the angels above." He then went on to state, that a few days before he had been searching the mountains for some medicinal roots, when his attention was suddenly arrested by a low moaning sound, and on going in the direction from whence it came, he found a very young looking creature, with a new-born infant, wrapped in a shawl, and lying in her arms. He spoke to the mother, but she made no reply, and seemed quite unconscious of every things till he attempted to take the child from her; she then grasped it so firmly, that he found it difficult to remove it. He called his wife to his assistance, and placed the infant in her arms. Pity for so young a sufferer nerved the old man with unwonted strength, and enabled him to bear the mother to his hut. There he used the simple restoratives his skill dictated; but nothing produced any effect till the child, with whom the old woman had taken unwearied pains, revived and cried. "The sound," he said, "seemed to waken life in a dead body." The mother extended her arms, as if to feel for her child, and they gently laid it in them. She felt the touch of its face, and burst into a flood of tears, which seemed greatly to relieve her; for after that she took a little nourishment, and fell into a sweet sleep, from which she awoke in a state to make some explanations to her curious preservers. But as the account she gave of herself was, of necessity, interrupted and imperfect, we shall take the liberty to avail ourselves of our knowledge of her history, and offer our readers a slight sketch of it.