"Drink this,Master Ned!"putting it to his master's lips."Nay"--to Ellinor--"it will do him no harm;only bring back his senses,which,poor gentleman,are scared away.We shall need all our wits.Now,sir,please answer my question.Did anyone see Measter Dunster come here?""I don't know,"said Mr.Wilkins,recovering his speech."It all seems in a mist.He offered to walk home with me;I did not want him.I was almost rude to him to keep him off.I did not want to talk of business;I had taken too much wine to be very clear and some things at the office were not quite in order,and he had found it out.If anyone heard our conversation,they must know I did not want him to come with me.Oh!why would he come?He was as obstinate--he would come--and here it has been his death!""Well,sir,what's done can't be undone,and I'm sure we'd any of us bring him back to life if we could,even by cutting off our hands,though he was a mighty plaguey chap while he'd breath in him.But what I'm thinking is this:it'll maybe go awkward with you,sir,if he's found here.One can't say.But don't you think,miss,as he's neither kith nor kin to miss him,we might just bury him away before morning,somewhere?There's better nor four hours of dark.I wish we could put him i'the churchyard,but that can't be;but,to my mind,the sooner we set about digging a place for him to lie in,poor fellow,the better it'll be for us all in the end.I can pare a piece of turf up where it'll never be missed,and if master'll take one spade,and I another,why we'll lay him softly down,and cover him up,and no one'll be the wiser."There was no reply from either for a minute or so.Then Mr.Wilkins said:
"If my father could have known of my living to this!Why,they will try me as a criminal;and you,Ellinor?Dixon,you are right.We must conceal it,or I must cut my throat,for I never could live through it.One minute of passion,and my life blasted!""Come along,sir,"said Dixon;"there's no time to lose."And they went out in search of tools;Ellinor following them,shivering all over,but begging that she might be with them,and not have to remain in the study with -She would not be bidden into her own room;she dreaded inaction and solitude.She made herself busy with carrying heavy baskets of turf,and straining her strength to the utmost;fetching all that was wanted,with soft swift steps.
Once,as she passed near the open study door,she thought that she heard a rustling,and a flash of hope came across her.Could he be reviving?She entered,but a moment was enough to undeceive her;it had only been a night rustle among the trees.Of hope,life,there was none.
They dug the hole deep and well;working with fierce energy to quench thought and remorse.Once or twice her father asked for brandy,which Ellinor,reassured by the apparently good effect of the first dose,brought to him without a word;and once at her father's suggestion she brought food,such as she could find in the dining-room without disturbing the household,for Dixon.
When all was ready for the reception of the body in its unblessed grave,Mr.Wilkins bade Ellinor go up to her own room--she had done all she could to help them;the rest must be done by them alone.She felt that it must;and indeed both her nerves and her bodily strength were giving way.She would have kissed her father,as he sat wearily at the head of the grave--Dixon had gone in to make some arrangement for carrying the corpse--but he pushed her away quietly,but resolutely -"No,Nelly,you must never kiss me again;I am a murderer.""But I will,my own darling papa,"said she,throwing her arms passionately round his neck,and covering his face with kisses."Ilove you,and I don't care what you are,if you were twenty times a murderer,which you are not;I am sure it was only an accident.""Go in,my child,go in,and try to get some rest.But go in,for we must finish as fast as we can.The moon is down;it will soon be daylight.What a blessing there are no rooms on one side of the house.Go,Nelly."And she went;straining herself up to move noiselessly,with eyes averted,through the room which she shuddered at as the place of hasty and unhallowed death.
Once in her own room she bolted the door on the inside,and then stole to the window,as if some fascination impelled her to watch all the proceedings to the end.But her aching eyes could hardly penetrate through the thick darkness,which,at the time of the year of which I am speaking,so closely precedes the dawn.She could discern the tops of the trees against the sky,and could single out the well-known one,at a little distance from the stem of which the grave was made,in the very piece of turf over which so lately she and Ralph had had their merry little tea-******;and where her father,as she now remembered,had shuddered and shivered,as if the ground on which his seat had then been placed was fateful and ominous to him.
Those below moved softly and quietly in all they did;but every sound had a significant and terrible interpretation to Ellinor's ears.
Before they had ended,the little birds had begun to pipe out their gay reveillee to the dawn.Then doors closed,and all was profoundly still.
Ellinor threw herself,in her clothes,on the bed;and was thankful for the intense weary physical pain which took off something of the anguish of thought--anguish that she fancied from time to time was leading to insanity.
By-and-by the morning cold made her instinctively creep between the blankets;and,once there,she fell into a dead heavy sleep.