CHAPTER XIVOut of sight of the house, at the entrance of the walk leading to the moor, Sir Arthur was conscious again of transitory, but rather sharp pains across the chest.He sat down to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of his favourite haunts.He climbed through ferny paths, and amid stretches of heather just coming to its purple prime, up towards the higher regions of the moor where the millstone grit cropped out in sharp edges, showing gaunt and dark against the afternoon sky. Here the beautiful stream that made a waterfall within the park came sliding down shelf after shelf of yellowish rock, with pools of deep brown water at intervals, overhung with mountain ash and birch.After the warm day, all the evening scents were abroad, carried by a gentle wind. Sir Arthur drank them in, with the sensuous pleasure which had been one of his gifts in life. The honey smell of the heather, the woody smell of the bracken, the faint fragrance of wood-smoke wafted from a bonfire in the valley below—they all carried with them an inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the movements of birds—the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance. Each and all reminded him of the halcyon times of life—adventures of his boyhood, the sporting pleasures of his manhood. By George!—how he had enjoyed them all!Presently, to his left, on the edge of the heathery slope he caught sight of one of the butts used in the great grouse-shoots of the moor. What a jolly party they had had last year in that week of wonderful October weather! Two hundred brace on the home moor the first day, and almost as many on the Fairdale moor the following day. Some of the men had never shot better. One of the party was now Viceroy of India; another had been killed in one of the endless little frontier fights that are the price, month by month, which the British Empire pays for its existence. Douglas had come off particularly well. His shooting from that butt to the left had been magnificent. Sir Arthur remembered well how the old hands had praised it, warming the cockles of his own heart.“I will have one more shoot,” he said to himself with passion—“I will!”Then, feeling suddenly tired, he sat down beside the slipping stream. It was fairly full, after some recent rain, and the music of it rang in his ears. Stretching out a hand he filled it full of silky grass and thyme, sniffing at it in delight. “How strange,” he thought, “that I can still enjoy these things. But I shall—till I die.”Below him, as he sat, lay the greater part of his estate stretching east and west; bounded on the west by some of the high moors leading up to the Pennine range, lost on the east in a blue and wooded distance. He could see the towers of three village churches, and the blurred greys and browns of the houses clustering round them—some near, some far. Stone farm-buildings, their white-washed gables glowing under the level sun, caught his eye, one after the other—now hidden in wood, now standing out upon the fields or the moorland, with one sycamore or a group of yews to shelter them. And here and there were larger houses; houses of the middle gentry, with their gardens and enclosures. Farms, villages, woods and moors, they were all his—nominally his, for a few weeks or months longer. And there was scarcely one of them in the whole wide scene, with which he had not some sporting association; whether of the hunting field, or the big autumn shoots, or the jolly partridge drives over the stubbles.But it suddenly and sharply struck him how very few other associations he possessed with these places spread below him in the declining August sunshine. He had not owned Flood more than fifteen years—enough however to lose it in! And he had succeeded a father who had been the beloved head of the county, a just and liberal landlord, a man of scrupulous kindness and honour, for whom everybody had a friendly word. His ruined son on the moorside thought with wonder and envy of his father’s popular arts, which yet were no arts. For himself he confessed,—aware as he was, this afternoon, of the presence in his mind of a new and strange insight with regard to his own life and past, as though he were writing his own obituary—that the people living in these farms and villages had meant little more to him than the troublesome conditions on which he enjoyed the pleasures of the Flood estates, the great income he drew from them, and the sport for which they were famous. He had his friends among the farmers of course, though they were few. There were men who had cringed to him, and whom he had rewarded. And Laura had given away plentifully in the villages. But his chief agent he knew had been a hard man and a careless one; and he had always loathed the trouble of looking after him. Again and again he had been appealed to, as against his agent; and he had not even answered the letters. He had occasionally done some public duties; he had allowed himself to be placed on the County Council, but had hardly ever attended meetings; he had taken the chair and made a speech occasionally, when it would have cost him more effort to refuse than to accept; and those portions of the estate which adjoined the castle were in fairly good repair. But on the remoter farms, and especially since his financial resources had begun to fail, he knew very well that there were cottages and farm-houses in a scandalous state, on which not a farthing had been spent for years.No, it could not be said he had played a successful part as a landowner. He had meant no harm to anybody. He had been simply idle and preoccupied; and that in a business where, under modern conditions, idleness is immoral. He was quite conscious that there were good men, frugal men, kind and God-fearing men, landlords like himself, though on a much smaller scale, in that tract of country under his feet, who felt bitterly towards him, who judged him severely, who would be thankful to see the last of him, and to know that the land had passed into other and better hands. Fifty-two years of life lived in that northern Vale of Eden; and what was there to show for them?—in honest work done, in peace of conscience, in friends? Now that the pictures were sold, there would be just enough to pay everybody, with a very little over. There was some comfort in that. He would have ruined nobody but himself and Duggy. Poor Laura would be quite comfortable on her own money, and would give him house-room no doubt—till the end.The end? But he might live another twenty years. The thought was intolerable. The apathy in which he had been lately living gave way. He realised, with quickened breath, what this parting from his inheritance and all the associations of his life would mean. He saw himself as a tree, dragged violently out of its native earth—rootless and rotten.Poor Duggy! Duggy was as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that gambler’s spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in acts he had been good.And through the man’s remorseful soul there throbbed the one deep, disinterested affection of his life—his love for his son. He had been very fond of Laura, but when it came to moments like this she meant little to him.He gave himself up to this feeling of love. How strange that it should both rend and soothe!—that it and it alone brought some comfort, some spermaceti for the inward bruise, amid all the bitterness connected with it. Duggy, in his arms, as a little toddling fellow, Duggy at school—playing for Harrow at Lord’s—Duggy at college—But of that part of his son’s life, as he realised with shame, he knew very little. He had been too entirely absorbed, when it arrived, in the frantic struggle, first for money, and then for solvency. Duggy had become in some ways during the last two years a stranger to him—his own fault! What had he done to help him through his college life—to “influence him for good,” as people said? Nothing. He had been enormously proud of his son’s university distinctions; he had supplied him lavishly with money; he had concealed from him his own financial situation till it was hopeless; he had given him the jolliest possible vacation, and that was all that could be said.The father groaned within himself. And yet again—how strangely!—did some fraction of healing virtue flow from his very distress?—from his remembrance, above all, of how Duggy had tried to help him?—during these few weeks since he knew?Ah!—Tidswell Church coming out of the shadows! He remembered how one winter he had been coming home late on horseback through dark lanes, when he met the parson of that church, old and threadbare and narrow-chested, trudging on, head bent, against a spitting rain. The owner of Flood had been smitten with a sudden compunction, and dismounting he had walked his horse beside the old man. The living of Tidswell was in his own gift. It amounted, he remembered, to some £140 a year. The old man, whose name was Trevenen, had an old wife, to whom Sir Arthur thought Lady Laura had sometimes sent some cast-off clothes.Mr. Trevenen had been baptising a prematurely born child in a high moorland farm. The walk there and back had been steep and long, and his thin lantern-jawed face shone very white through the wintry dusk.“You must be very tired,” Sir Arthur had said, remembering uncomfortably the dinner to which he was himself bent—the chef, the wines, the large house-party.And Mr. Trevenen had looked up and smiled.“Not very. I have been unusually cheered as I walked by thoughts of the Divine Love!”The words had been so simply said; and a minute afterwards the old pale-faced parson had disappeared into the dark.What did the words mean? Had they really any meaning?“The Divine Love.” Arthur Falloden did not know then, and did not know now. But he had often thought of the incident.He leaned over, musing, to gather a bunch of hare-bells growing on the edge of the stream. As he did so, he was conscious again of a sharp pain in the chest. In a few more seconds, he was stretched on the moorland grass, wrestling with a torturing anguish that was crushing his life out. It seemed to last an eternity. Then it relaxed, and he was able to breathe and think again.“What is it?”Confused recollections of the death of his old grandfather, when he himself was a child, rose in his mind. “He was out hunting—horrible pain—two hours. Is this the same? If it is—I shall die—here—alone.”He tried to move after a little, but found himself helpless. A brief intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long had he been there?“Could you drink this?” said a voice behind him. He opened his eyes and saw a young man, with a halo of red-gold hair, and a tremulous, pitying face, quite strange to him, bending over him.There was some brandy at his lips. He drank with difficulty. What had happened to the light? How dark it was!“Where am I?” he said, looking up blindly into the face above him.“I found you here—on the moor—lying on the grass. Are you better? Shall I run down now—and fetch some one?”“Don’t go—”The agony returned. When Sir Arthur spoke again, it was very feebly.“I can’t live—through—much more of that. I’m dying. Don’t leave me. Where’s my son? Where’s my son—Douglas? Who are you?”The glazing eyes tried to make out the features of the stranger. They were too dim to notice the sudden shiver that passed through them as he named his son.“I can’t get at any one. I’ve been calling for a long time. My name is Radowitz. I’m staying at Penfold Rectory. If I could only carry you! I tried to lift you—but I couldn’t. I’ve only one hand.” He pointed despairingly to the sling he was wearing.“Tell my son—tell Douglas—”But the faint voice ceased abruptly, and the eyes closed. Only there was a slight movement of the lips, which Radowitz, bending his ear to the mouth of the dying man, tried to interpret. He thought it said “pray,” but he could not be sure.Radowitz looked round him in an anguish. No one on the purple side of the moor, no one on the grassy tracks leading downwards to the park; only the wide gold of the evening—the rising of a light wind—the rustling of the fern—and the loud, laboured breathing below him.He bent again over the helpless form, murmuring words in haste.Meanwhile after Sir Arthur left the house, Douglas had been urgently summoned by his mother. He found her at tea with Trix in her own sitting-room. Roger was away, staying with a school friend, to the general relief of the household; Nelly, the girl of seventeen, was with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother’s little shadow and constant companion. The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents’ minds. Her high spirits had all dropped. She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth. The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma was so unhappy and cried so much; and that mamma should cry seemed to bring her whole world tumbling about the child’s ears. Only Douglas, for sheer impatience with the general gloom of the house, would sometimes tease her or chase her; and then the child’s laugh would ring out—a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura “knew.”Poor Lady Laura! Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had kept everything from her. She was not a person of profound or sensitive feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband’s long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in her distress and misery.The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had overwhelmed her. As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother came hurriedly into the library.“Douglas, where is your father?”“He went out for a walk before tea. Hasn’t he come in?”“No. And it’s more than two hours. I—I don’t like it, Duggy. He hasn’t been a bit well lately—and so awfully depressed. Please go and look for him, dear!”Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother’s mind. It seemed to him absurd. He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat and went out obediently.He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the family distress.Five miles away, in this same evening glow, was Constance Bledlow walking or sitting in her aunts’ garden? Or was she nearer still—at Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home. But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor, besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so determined not to run any risks of a meeting, he might very well have come across Sorell at least, if not Radowitz, on the high ground dominating the valleys on either side. Sorell was a great walker. But probably they were as anxious to avoid a casual meeting as he was.The evening was rapidly darkening, and as he climbed he searched the hillside with his quick eyes for any sign of his father. Once or twice he stopped to call:“Father!”The sound died away, echoing among the fields and hollows of the moor. But there was no answer. He climbed further. He was now near the stream which descended through the park, and its loud jubilant voice burst upon him, filling the silence.Then, above the plashing of the stream and the rising of the wind, he heard suddenly a cry:“Help!”It came from a point above his head. A sudden horror came upon him. He dashed on. In another minute a man’s figure appeared, higher up, dark against the reddened sky. The man put one hand to his mouth, and shouted through it again—“Help!”Douglas came up with him. In speechless amazement he saw that it was Otto Radowitz, without a coat, bareheaded, pale and breathless.“There’s a man here, Falloden. I think it’s your father. He’s awfully ill. I believe he’s dying. Come at once! I’ve been shouting for a long time.”Douglas said nothing. He rushed on, following Radowitz, who took a short cut bounding through the deep ling of the moor. Only a few yards till Douglas perceived a man, with a grey, drawn face, who was lying full length on a stretch of grass beside the stream, his head and shoulders propped against a low rock on which a folded coat had been placed as a pillow.“Father!”Sir Arthur opened his eyes. He was drawing deep, gasping breaths, the strong life in him wrestling still. But the helplessness, the ineffable surrender and defeat of man’s last hour, was in his face.Falloden knelt down.“Father!—don’t you know me? Well soon carry you home. It’s Duggy!” No answer. Radowitz had gone a few yards away, and was also kneeling, his face buried in his hands, his back turned to the father and son.Douglas made another agonised appeal, and the grey face quivered. A whisper passed the lips.“It’s best, Duggy—poor Duggy! Kiss me, old boy. Tell your mother—that young man—prayed for me. She’ll like to—know that. My love—”The last words were spoken with a great effort; and the breaths that followed grew slower and slower as the vital tide withdrew itself. Once more the eyes opened, and Douglas saw in them the old affectionate look. Then the lips shaped themselves again to words that made no sound; a shudder passed through the limbs—their last movement.Douglas knelt on, looking closely into his father’s face, listening for the breath that came no more. He felt rather than saw that Radowitz had moved still further away.Two or three deep sobs escaped him—involuntary, almost unconscious. Then he pulled himself together. His mother? Who was to tell her?He went to call Radowitz, who came eagerly.“My father is dead,” said Falloden, deadly pale, but composed. “How long have you been here?”“About half an hour. When I arrived he was in agonies of pain. I gave him brandy, and he revived a little. Then I wanted to go for help, but he begged me not to leave him alone. So I could only shout and wave my handkerchief. The pains came back and back—and every time he grew weaker. Oh, it wasangina. I have seen it before—twice. If I had only had some nitrite of amyl! But there was nothing—nothing I could do.” He paused, and then added timidly, “I am a Catholic; I said some of our prayers.”He looked gravely into Falloden’s face. Falloden’s eyes met his, and both men remembered—momentarily—the scene in Marmion Quad.“We must get him down,” said Falloden abruptly. “And there is my mother.”“I would help you to carry him, of course; but—you see—I can’t.”[Illustration: ]Douglas knelt, looking into his father’s face, and Radowitz moved farther awayHis delicate skin flushed deeply. Falloden realised for the first time the sling across his shoulder and the helpless hand lying in it. He turned away, searching with his eyes the shadows of the valley. At the moment, the spot where they stood was garishly illuminated by the rapidly receding light, which had already left the lower ground. The grass at their feet, the rocks, the stream, the stretches of heather were steeped and drenched in the last rays of sun which shot upon them in a fierce concentration from the lower edge of a great cloud. But the landmarks below were hard to make out—for a stranger’s eyes.“You see that cottage—where the smoke is?”Radowitz assented.“You will find a keeper there. Send him with three or four men.”“Yes—at once. Shall I take a message to the house?”Radowitz spoke very gently. The red-gold of his hair, and his blue eyes, were all shining in the strange light. But he was again as pale as Falloden himself. Douglas drew out a pencil, and a letter from his pocket. He wrote some words on the envelope, and handed it to Radowitz.“That’s for my mother’s maid. She will know what to do. She is an old servant. I must stay here.”Radowitz rushed away, leaping and running down the steep side of the hill, his white shirt, crossed by the black sling, conspicuous all the way, till he was at last lost to sight in the wood leading to the keeper’s cottage.Falloden went back to the dead man. He straightened his father’s limbs and closed his eyes. Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm tenderly across the body. And the recollection came back to him of that hunting accident years ago—the weight of his father on his shoulders—the bitter cold—the tears which not all his boyish scorn of tears could stop.His poor mother! She must see Radowitz, for Radowitz alone could tell the story of that last half hour. He must give evidence, too, at the inquest.Radowitz! Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through Falloden’s brain, as though driven through it from outside. What a nursery tale!—how simple!—how crude! Could not the gods have devised a subtler retribution?Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats. The touch of his father’s still warm body brought him back to the plain, tragic fact. He raised himself on his elbow to look again at the dead face.The handsome head with its grizzled hair was resting on Radowitz’s coat. Falloden could not bear it. He took off his own, and gently substituted it for the other. And as he laid the head down, he kissed the hair and the brow. He was alone with his father—more alone than he ever would be again. There was not a human step or voice upon the moor. Night was coming rapidly on. The stream rushed beside him. There were a few cries of birds—mostly owls from the woods below. The dead man’s face beside him was very solemn and quiet. And overhead, the angry sunset clouds were fading into a dim and star-strewn heaven, above a world sinking to its rest.The moon was up before Radowitz came back to the little rectory on the other side of the moor. Sorell, from whose mind he was seldom absent, had begun to worry about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in search of him. But about nine o’clock he heard the front gate open and jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he went to meet the truant.Radowitz staggered towards him, and clung to his arm.“My dear fellow,” cried Sorell, aghast at the bay’s appearance and manner—“what have you been doing to yourself?”“I went up the moor for a walk after tea—it was so gorgeous, the clouds and the view. I got drawn on a bit—on the castle side. I wasn’t really thinking where I was going. Then I saw the park below me, and the house. And immediately afterwards, I heard a groaning sound, and there was a man lying on the ground. It was Sir Arthur Falloden—and he died—while I was there.” The boy’s golden head dropped suddenly against Sorell. “I say, can’t I have some food, and go to bed?”Sorell took him in and looked after him like a mother, helped by the kind apple-faced rector, who had heard the castle news from other sources also, and was greatly moved.When Otto’s exhaustion had been fed and he was lying in his bed with drawn brows, and no intention or prospect of going to sleep, Sorell let him tell his tale.“When the bearers came, I went down with them to the castle, and I saw Lady Laura”—said the boy, turning his head restlessly from side to side. “I say, it’s awful—how women cry! Then they told me about the inquest—I shall have to go to-morrow—and on the way home I went to see Lady Connie. I thought she ought to know.”Sorell started.“And you found her?”“Oh, yes. She was sitting in the garden.”There was a short silence. Then Otto flung up his left hand, caught a gnat that was buzzing round his head, and laughed—a dreary little sound.“It’s quite true—she’s in love with him.”“With Douglas Falloden?”Otto nodded.“She was awfully cut up when I told her—just for him. She didn’t cry of course. Our generation doesn’t seem to cry—like Lady Laura. But you could see what she wanted.”“To go to him?”“That’s it. And of course she can’t. My word, it is hard on women! They’re hampered such a lot—by all their traditions. Why don’t they kick ’em over?”“I hope she will do nothing of the kind,” said Sorell with energy. “The traditions may just save her.”Otto thought over it.“You mean—save her from doing something for pity that she wouldn’t do if she had time to think?”Sorell assented.“Why should that fellow be any more likely now to make her happy—”“Because he’s lost his money and his father? I don’t know why he should. I dare say he’ll begin bullying and slave-driving again—when he’s forgotten all this. But—”“But what?”“Well—you see—I didn’t think he could possibly care about anything but himself. I thought he was as hard as a millstone all through. Well, he isn’t. That’s so queer!”The speaker’s voice took a dreamy tone.Sorell glanced in bitterness at the maimed hand lying on the bed. It was still bandaged, but he knew very well what sort of a shapeless, ruined thing it would emerge, when the bandages were thrown aside. It was strange and fascinating—to a student of psychology—that Otto should have been brought, so suddenly, so unforeseeably, into this pathetic and intimate relation with the man to whom, essentially, he owed his disaster. But what difference did it make in the quality of the Marmion outrage, or to any sane judgment of Douglas Falloden?“Go to sleep, old boy,” he said at last. “You’ll have a hard time to-morrow.”“What, the inquest? Oh, I don’t mind about that. If I could only understand that fellow!”He threw his head back, staring at the ceiling.Otto Radowitz, in spite of Sorell’s admonitions, slept very little that night. His nights were apt to be feverish and disturbed. But on this occasion imagination and excitement made it impossible to stop the brain process, the ceaseless round of thought; and the hours of darkness were intolerably long. Memory went back behind the meeting with the dying man on the hillside, to an earlier experience—an hour of madness, of “possession.” His whole spiritual being was still bruised and martyred from it, like that sufferer of old whom the evil spirit “tore” in departing. What had delivered him? The horror was still on him, still his master, when he became aware of that white face on the grass—He drowsed off again. But in his half-dream, he seemed to be kneeling again and reciting Latin words, words he had heard last when his mother was approaching her end. He was more than half sceptical, so far as the upper mind was concerned; but the under-consciousness was steeped in ideas derived from his early home and training, ideas of sacrifice, forgiveness, atonement, judgment—the common and immortal stock of Christianity. He had been brought up in a house pervaded by the crucifix, and by a mother who was ardently devout.But why had God—if there was a God—brought this wonderful thing to pass? Never had his heart been so full of hatred as in that hour of lonely wandering on the moor, before he perceived the huddled figure lying by the stream. And, all in a moment, he had become his enemy’s proxy—his representative—in the last and tenderest service that man can render to man. He had played the part of son to Falloden’s dying father—had prayed for him from the depths of his heart, tortured with pity. And when Falloden came, with what strange eyes they had looked at each other!—as though all veils had dropped—all barriers had, for the moment, dropped away.“Shall I hate him again to-morrow?” thought Radowitz. “Or shall I be more sorry for him than for myself? Yes, that’s what I felt!—so marvellously!”So that when he went to Constance with his news, and under the emotion of it, saw the girl’s heart unveiled—“I was not jealous,” he thought. “I just wanted to give her everything!”Yet, as the night passed on, and that dreary moment of the first awakening earth arrived, when all the griefs of mankind weigh heaviest, he was shaken anew by gusts of passion and despair; and this time for himself. Suppose—for in spite of all Sorell’s evasions and concealments, he knew very well that Sorell was anxious about him, and the doctors had said ugly things—suppose he got really ill?—suppose he died, without having lived?He thought of Constance in the moonlit garden, her sweetness, her gratefulness to him for coming, her small, white “flower-face,” and the look in her eyes.“If I might—only once—have kissed her—have held her in my arms!” he thought, with anguish. And rolling on his face, he lay prone, fighting his fight alone, till exhaustion conquered, and “he took the gift of sleep.”
Out of sight of the house, at the entrance of the walk leading to the moor, Sir Arthur was conscious again of transitory, but rather sharp pains across the chest.
He sat down to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of his favourite haunts.
He climbed through ferny paths, and amid stretches of heather just coming to its purple prime, up towards the higher regions of the moor where the millstone grit cropped out in sharp edges, showing gaunt and dark against the afternoon sky. Here the beautiful stream that made a waterfall within the park came sliding down shelf after shelf of yellowish rock, with pools of deep brown water at intervals, overhung with mountain ash and birch.
After the warm day, all the evening scents were abroad, carried by a gentle wind. Sir Arthur drank them in, with the sensuous pleasure which had been one of his gifts in life. The honey smell of the heather, the woody smell of the bracken, the faint fragrance of wood-smoke wafted from a bonfire in the valley below—they all carried with them an inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the movements of birds—the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance. Each and all reminded him of the halcyon times of life—adventures of his boyhood, the sporting pleasures of his manhood. By George!—how he had enjoyed them all!
Presently, to his left, on the edge of the heathery slope he caught sight of one of the butts used in the great grouse-shoots of the moor. What a jolly party they had had last year in that week of wonderful October weather! Two hundred brace on the home moor the first day, and almost as many on the Fairdale moor the following day. Some of the men had never shot better. One of the party was now Viceroy of India; another had been killed in one of the endless little frontier fights that are the price, month by month, which the British Empire pays for its existence. Douglas had come off particularly well. His shooting from that butt to the left had been magnificent. Sir Arthur remembered well how the old hands had praised it, warming the cockles of his own heart.
“I will have one more shoot,” he said to himself with passion—“I will!”
Then, feeling suddenly tired, he sat down beside the slipping stream. It was fairly full, after some recent rain, and the music of it rang in his ears. Stretching out a hand he filled it full of silky grass and thyme, sniffing at it in delight. “How strange,” he thought, “that I can still enjoy these things. But I shall—till I die.”
Below him, as he sat, lay the greater part of his estate stretching east and west; bounded on the west by some of the high moors leading up to the Pennine range, lost on the east in a blue and wooded distance. He could see the towers of three village churches, and the blurred greys and browns of the houses clustering round them—some near, some far. Stone farm-buildings, their white-washed gables glowing under the level sun, caught his eye, one after the other—now hidden in wood, now standing out upon the fields or the moorland, with one sycamore or a group of yews to shelter them. And here and there were larger houses; houses of the middle gentry, with their gardens and enclosures. Farms, villages, woods and moors, they were all his—nominally his, for a few weeks or months longer. And there was scarcely one of them in the whole wide scene, with which he had not some sporting association; whether of the hunting field, or the big autumn shoots, or the jolly partridge drives over the stubbles.
But it suddenly and sharply struck him how very few other associations he possessed with these places spread below him in the declining August sunshine. He had not owned Flood more than fifteen years—enough however to lose it in! And he had succeeded a father who had been the beloved head of the county, a just and liberal landlord, a man of scrupulous kindness and honour, for whom everybody had a friendly word. His ruined son on the moorside thought with wonder and envy of his father’s popular arts, which yet were no arts. For himself he confessed,—aware as he was, this afternoon, of the presence in his mind of a new and strange insight with regard to his own life and past, as though he were writing his own obituary—that the people living in these farms and villages had meant little more to him than the troublesome conditions on which he enjoyed the pleasures of the Flood estates, the great income he drew from them, and the sport for which they were famous. He had his friends among the farmers of course, though they were few. There were men who had cringed to him, and whom he had rewarded. And Laura had given away plentifully in the villages. But his chief agent he knew had been a hard man and a careless one; and he had always loathed the trouble of looking after him. Again and again he had been appealed to, as against his agent; and he had not even answered the letters. He had occasionally done some public duties; he had allowed himself to be placed on the County Council, but had hardly ever attended meetings; he had taken the chair and made a speech occasionally, when it would have cost him more effort to refuse than to accept; and those portions of the estate which adjoined the castle were in fairly good repair. But on the remoter farms, and especially since his financial resources had begun to fail, he knew very well that there were cottages and farm-houses in a scandalous state, on which not a farthing had been spent for years.
No, it could not be said he had played a successful part as a landowner. He had meant no harm to anybody. He had been simply idle and preoccupied; and that in a business where, under modern conditions, idleness is immoral. He was quite conscious that there were good men, frugal men, kind and God-fearing men, landlords like himself, though on a much smaller scale, in that tract of country under his feet, who felt bitterly towards him, who judged him severely, who would be thankful to see the last of him, and to know that the land had passed into other and better hands. Fifty-two years of life lived in that northern Vale of Eden; and what was there to show for them?—in honest work done, in peace of conscience, in friends? Now that the pictures were sold, there would be just enough to pay everybody, with a very little over. There was some comfort in that. He would have ruined nobody but himself and Duggy. Poor Laura would be quite comfortable on her own money, and would give him house-room no doubt—till the end.
The end? But he might live another twenty years. The thought was intolerable. The apathy in which he had been lately living gave way. He realised, with quickened breath, what this parting from his inheritance and all the associations of his life would mean. He saw himself as a tree, dragged violently out of its native earth—rootless and rotten.
Poor Duggy! Duggy was as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that gambler’s spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in acts he had been good.
And through the man’s remorseful soul there throbbed the one deep, disinterested affection of his life—his love for his son. He had been very fond of Laura, but when it came to moments like this she meant little to him.
He gave himself up to this feeling of love. How strange that it should both rend and soothe!—that it and it alone brought some comfort, some spermaceti for the inward bruise, amid all the bitterness connected with it. Duggy, in his arms, as a little toddling fellow, Duggy at school—playing for Harrow at Lord’s—Duggy at college—
But of that part of his son’s life, as he realised with shame, he knew very little. He had been too entirely absorbed, when it arrived, in the frantic struggle, first for money, and then for solvency. Duggy had become in some ways during the last two years a stranger to him—his own fault! What had he done to help him through his college life—to “influence him for good,” as people said? Nothing. He had been enormously proud of his son’s university distinctions; he had supplied him lavishly with money; he had concealed from him his own financial situation till it was hopeless; he had given him the jolliest possible vacation, and that was all that could be said.
The father groaned within himself. And yet again—how strangely!—did some fraction of healing virtue flow from his very distress?—from his remembrance, above all, of how Duggy had tried to help him?—during these few weeks since he knew?
Ah!—Tidswell Church coming out of the shadows! He remembered how one winter he had been coming home late on horseback through dark lanes, when he met the parson of that church, old and threadbare and narrow-chested, trudging on, head bent, against a spitting rain. The owner of Flood had been smitten with a sudden compunction, and dismounting he had walked his horse beside the old man. The living of Tidswell was in his own gift. It amounted, he remembered, to some £140 a year. The old man, whose name was Trevenen, had an old wife, to whom Sir Arthur thought Lady Laura had sometimes sent some cast-off clothes.
Mr. Trevenen had been baptising a prematurely born child in a high moorland farm. The walk there and back had been steep and long, and his thin lantern-jawed face shone very white through the wintry dusk.
“You must be very tired,” Sir Arthur had said, remembering uncomfortably the dinner to which he was himself bent—the chef, the wines, the large house-party.
And Mr. Trevenen had looked up and smiled.
“Not very. I have been unusually cheered as I walked by thoughts of the Divine Love!”
The words had been so simply said; and a minute afterwards the old pale-faced parson had disappeared into the dark.
What did the words mean? Had they really any meaning?
“The Divine Love.” Arthur Falloden did not know then, and did not know now. But he had often thought of the incident.
He leaned over, musing, to gather a bunch of hare-bells growing on the edge of the stream. As he did so, he was conscious again of a sharp pain in the chest. In a few more seconds, he was stretched on the moorland grass, wrestling with a torturing anguish that was crushing his life out. It seemed to last an eternity. Then it relaxed, and he was able to breathe and think again.
“What is it?”
Confused recollections of the death of his old grandfather, when he himself was a child, rose in his mind. “He was out hunting—horrible pain—two hours. Is this the same? If it is—I shall die—here—alone.”
He tried to move after a little, but found himself helpless. A brief intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long had he been there?
“Could you drink this?” said a voice behind him. He opened his eyes and saw a young man, with a halo of red-gold hair, and a tremulous, pitying face, quite strange to him, bending over him.
There was some brandy at his lips. He drank with difficulty. What had happened to the light? How dark it was!
“Where am I?” he said, looking up blindly into the face above him.
“I found you here—on the moor—lying on the grass. Are you better? Shall I run down now—and fetch some one?”
“Don’t go—”
The agony returned. When Sir Arthur spoke again, it was very feebly.
“I can’t live—through—much more of that. I’m dying. Don’t leave me. Where’s my son? Where’s my son—Douglas? Who are you?”
The glazing eyes tried to make out the features of the stranger. They were too dim to notice the sudden shiver that passed through them as he named his son.
“I can’t get at any one. I’ve been calling for a long time. My name is Radowitz. I’m staying at Penfold Rectory. If I could only carry you! I tried to lift you—but I couldn’t. I’ve only one hand.” He pointed despairingly to the sling he was wearing.
“Tell my son—tell Douglas—”
But the faint voice ceased abruptly, and the eyes closed. Only there was a slight movement of the lips, which Radowitz, bending his ear to the mouth of the dying man, tried to interpret. He thought it said “pray,” but he could not be sure.
Radowitz looked round him in an anguish. No one on the purple side of the moor, no one on the grassy tracks leading downwards to the park; only the wide gold of the evening—the rising of a light wind—the rustling of the fern—and the loud, laboured breathing below him.
He bent again over the helpless form, murmuring words in haste.
Meanwhile after Sir Arthur left the house, Douglas had been urgently summoned by his mother. He found her at tea with Trix in her own sitting-room. Roger was away, staying with a school friend, to the general relief of the household; Nelly, the girl of seventeen, was with relations in Scotland, but Trix had become her mother’s little shadow and constant companion. The child was very conscious of the weight on her parents’ minds. Her high spirits had all dropped. She had a wistful, shrinking look, which suited ill with her round face and her childishly parted lips over her small white teeth. The little face was made for laughter; but in these days only Douglas could bring back her smiles, because mamma was so unhappy and cried so much; and that mamma should cry seemed to bring her whole world tumbling about the child’s ears. Only Douglas, for sheer impatience with the general gloom of the house, would sometimes tease her or chase her; and then the child’s laugh would ring out—a ghostly echo from the days before Lady Laura “knew.”
Poor Lady Laura! Up to the last moment before the crash, her husband had kept everything from her. She was not a person of profound or sensitive feeling; and yet it is probable that her resentment of her husband’s long secrecy, and the implications of it, counted for a great deal in her distress and misery.
The sale of the pictures, as shortly reported by Douglas, had overwhelmed her. As soon as her son appeared in her room, she poured out upon him a stream of lamentation and complaint, while Trix was alternately playing with the kitten on her knee and drying furtive tears on a very grubby pocket-handkerchief.
Douglas was on the whole patient and explanatory, for he was really sorry for his mother; but as soon as he could he escaped from her on the plea of urgent letters and estate accounts.
The August evening wore on, and it was nearing sunset when his mother came hurriedly into the library.
“Douglas, where is your father?”
“He went out for a walk before tea. Hasn’t he come in?”
“No. And it’s more than two hours. I—I don’t like it, Duggy. He hasn’t been a bit well lately—and so awfully depressed. Please go and look for him, dear!”
Douglas suddenly perceived the terror in his mother’s mind. It seemed to him absurd. He knew his father better than she did; but he took his hat and went out obediently.
He had happened to notice his father going towards the moor, and he took the same path, running simply for exercise, measuring his young strength against the steepness of the hill and filling his lungs with the sweet evening air, in a passionate physical reaction against the family distress.
Five miles away, in this same evening glow, was Constance Bledlow walking or sitting in her aunts’ garden? Or was she nearer still—at Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home. But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor, besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so determined not to run any risks of a meeting, he might very well have come across Sorell at least, if not Radowitz, on the high ground dominating the valleys on either side. Sorell was a great walker. But probably they were as anxious to avoid a casual meeting as he was.
The evening was rapidly darkening, and as he climbed he searched the hillside with his quick eyes for any sign of his father. Once or twice he stopped to call:
“Father!”
The sound died away, echoing among the fields and hollows of the moor. But there was no answer. He climbed further. He was now near the stream which descended through the park, and its loud jubilant voice burst upon him, filling the silence.
Then, above the plashing of the stream and the rising of the wind, he heard suddenly a cry:
“Help!”
It came from a point above his head. A sudden horror came upon him. He dashed on. In another minute a man’s figure appeared, higher up, dark against the reddened sky. The man put one hand to his mouth, and shouted through it again—“Help!”
Douglas came up with him. In speechless amazement he saw that it was Otto Radowitz, without a coat, bareheaded, pale and breathless.
“There’s a man here, Falloden. I think it’s your father. He’s awfully ill. I believe he’s dying. Come at once! I’ve been shouting for a long time.”
Douglas said nothing. He rushed on, following Radowitz, who took a short cut bounding through the deep ling of the moor. Only a few yards till Douglas perceived a man, with a grey, drawn face, who was lying full length on a stretch of grass beside the stream, his head and shoulders propped against a low rock on which a folded coat had been placed as a pillow.
“Father!”
Sir Arthur opened his eyes. He was drawing deep, gasping breaths, the strong life in him wrestling still. But the helplessness, the ineffable surrender and defeat of man’s last hour, was in his face.
Falloden knelt down.
“Father!—don’t you know me? Well soon carry you home. It’s Duggy!” No answer. Radowitz had gone a few yards away, and was also kneeling, his face buried in his hands, his back turned to the father and son.
Douglas made another agonised appeal, and the grey face quivered. A whisper passed the lips.
“It’s best, Duggy—poor Duggy! Kiss me, old boy. Tell your mother—that young man—prayed for me. She’ll like to—know that. My love—”
The last words were spoken with a great effort; and the breaths that followed grew slower and slower as the vital tide withdrew itself. Once more the eyes opened, and Douglas saw in them the old affectionate look. Then the lips shaped themselves again to words that made no sound; a shudder passed through the limbs—their last movement.
Douglas knelt on, looking closely into his father’s face, listening for the breath that came no more. He felt rather than saw that Radowitz had moved still further away.
Two or three deep sobs escaped him—involuntary, almost unconscious. Then he pulled himself together. His mother? Who was to tell her?
He went to call Radowitz, who came eagerly.
“My father is dead,” said Falloden, deadly pale, but composed. “How long have you been here?”
“About half an hour. When I arrived he was in agonies of pain. I gave him brandy, and he revived a little. Then I wanted to go for help, but he begged me not to leave him alone. So I could only shout and wave my handkerchief. The pains came back and back—and every time he grew weaker. Oh, it wasangina. I have seen it before—twice. If I had only had some nitrite of amyl! But there was nothing—nothing I could do.” He paused, and then added timidly, “I am a Catholic; I said some of our prayers.”
He looked gravely into Falloden’s face. Falloden’s eyes met his, and both men remembered—momentarily—the scene in Marmion Quad.
“We must get him down,” said Falloden abruptly. “And there is my mother.”
“I would help you to carry him, of course; but—you see—I can’t.”
[Illustration: ]Douglas knelt, looking into his father’s face, and Radowitz moved farther away
Douglas knelt, looking into his father’s face, and Radowitz moved farther away
His delicate skin flushed deeply. Falloden realised for the first time the sling across his shoulder and the helpless hand lying in it. He turned away, searching with his eyes the shadows of the valley. At the moment, the spot where they stood was garishly illuminated by the rapidly receding light, which had already left the lower ground. The grass at their feet, the rocks, the stream, the stretches of heather were steeped and drenched in the last rays of sun which shot upon them in a fierce concentration from the lower edge of a great cloud. But the landmarks below were hard to make out—for a stranger’s eyes.
“You see that cottage—where the smoke is?”
Radowitz assented.
“You will find a keeper there. Send him with three or four men.”
“Yes—at once. Shall I take a message to the house?”
Radowitz spoke very gently. The red-gold of his hair, and his blue eyes, were all shining in the strange light. But he was again as pale as Falloden himself. Douglas drew out a pencil, and a letter from his pocket. He wrote some words on the envelope, and handed it to Radowitz.
“That’s for my mother’s maid. She will know what to do. She is an old servant. I must stay here.”
Radowitz rushed away, leaping and running down the steep side of the hill, his white shirt, crossed by the black sling, conspicuous all the way, till he was at last lost to sight in the wood leading to the keeper’s cottage.
Falloden went back to the dead man. He straightened his father’s limbs and closed his eyes. Then he lay down beside him, throwing his arm tenderly across the body. And the recollection came back to him of that hunting accident years ago—the weight of his father on his shoulders—the bitter cold—the tears which not all his boyish scorn of tears could stop.
His poor mother! She must see Radowitz, for Radowitz alone could tell the story of that last half hour. He must give evidence, too, at the inquest.
Radowitz! Thoughts, ironic and perverse, ran swarming through Falloden’s brain, as though driven through it from outside. What a nursery tale!—how simple!—how crude! Could not the gods have devised a subtler retribution?
Then these thoughts vanished again, like a cloud of gnats. The touch of his father’s still warm body brought him back to the plain, tragic fact. He raised himself on his elbow to look again at the dead face.
The handsome head with its grizzled hair was resting on Radowitz’s coat. Falloden could not bear it. He took off his own, and gently substituted it for the other. And as he laid the head down, he kissed the hair and the brow. He was alone with his father—more alone than he ever would be again. There was not a human step or voice upon the moor. Night was coming rapidly on. The stream rushed beside him. There were a few cries of birds—mostly owls from the woods below. The dead man’s face beside him was very solemn and quiet. And overhead, the angry sunset clouds were fading into a dim and star-strewn heaven, above a world sinking to its rest.
The moon was up before Radowitz came back to the little rectory on the other side of the moor. Sorell, from whose mind he was seldom absent, had begun to worry about him, was in fact on the point of setting out in search of him. But about nine o’clock he heard the front gate open and jumping down from the low open window of the rectory drawing-room he went to meet the truant.
Radowitz staggered towards him, and clung to his arm.
“My dear fellow,” cried Sorell, aghast at the bay’s appearance and manner—“what have you been doing to yourself?”
“I went up the moor for a walk after tea—it was so gorgeous, the clouds and the view. I got drawn on a bit—on the castle side. I wasn’t really thinking where I was going. Then I saw the park below me, and the house. And immediately afterwards, I heard a groaning sound, and there was a man lying on the ground. It was Sir Arthur Falloden—and he died—while I was there.” The boy’s golden head dropped suddenly against Sorell. “I say, can’t I have some food, and go to bed?”
Sorell took him in and looked after him like a mother, helped by the kind apple-faced rector, who had heard the castle news from other sources also, and was greatly moved.
When Otto’s exhaustion had been fed and he was lying in his bed with drawn brows, and no intention or prospect of going to sleep, Sorell let him tell his tale.
“When the bearers came, I went down with them to the castle, and I saw Lady Laura”—said the boy, turning his head restlessly from side to side. “I say, it’s awful—how women cry! Then they told me about the inquest—I shall have to go to-morrow—and on the way home I went to see Lady Connie. I thought she ought to know.”
Sorell started.
“And you found her?”
“Oh, yes. She was sitting in the garden.”
There was a short silence. Then Otto flung up his left hand, caught a gnat that was buzzing round his head, and laughed—a dreary little sound.
“It’s quite true—she’s in love with him.”
“With Douglas Falloden?”
Otto nodded.
“She was awfully cut up when I told her—just for him. She didn’t cry of course. Our generation doesn’t seem to cry—like Lady Laura. But you could see what she wanted.”
“To go to him?”
“That’s it. And of course she can’t. My word, it is hard on women! They’re hampered such a lot—by all their traditions. Why don’t they kick ’em over?”
“I hope she will do nothing of the kind,” said Sorell with energy. “The traditions may just save her.”
Otto thought over it.
“You mean—save her from doing something for pity that she wouldn’t do if she had time to think?”
Sorell assented.
“Why should that fellow be any more likely now to make her happy—”
“Because he’s lost his money and his father? I don’t know why he should. I dare say he’ll begin bullying and slave-driving again—when he’s forgotten all this. But—”
“But what?”
“Well—you see—I didn’t think he could possibly care about anything but himself. I thought he was as hard as a millstone all through. Well, he isn’t. That’s so queer!”
The speaker’s voice took a dreamy tone.
Sorell glanced in bitterness at the maimed hand lying on the bed. It was still bandaged, but he knew very well what sort of a shapeless, ruined thing it would emerge, when the bandages were thrown aside. It was strange and fascinating—to a student of psychology—that Otto should have been brought, so suddenly, so unforeseeably, into this pathetic and intimate relation with the man to whom, essentially, he owed his disaster. But what difference did it make in the quality of the Marmion outrage, or to any sane judgment of Douglas Falloden?
“Go to sleep, old boy,” he said at last. “You’ll have a hard time to-morrow.”
“What, the inquest? Oh, I don’t mind about that. If I could only understand that fellow!”
He threw his head back, staring at the ceiling.
Otto Radowitz, in spite of Sorell’s admonitions, slept very little that night. His nights were apt to be feverish and disturbed. But on this occasion imagination and excitement made it impossible to stop the brain process, the ceaseless round of thought; and the hours of darkness were intolerably long. Memory went back behind the meeting with the dying man on the hillside, to an earlier experience—an hour of madness, of “possession.” His whole spiritual being was still bruised and martyred from it, like that sufferer of old whom the evil spirit “tore” in departing. What had delivered him? The horror was still on him, still his master, when he became aware of that white face on the grass—
He drowsed off again. But in his half-dream, he seemed to be kneeling again and reciting Latin words, words he had heard last when his mother was approaching her end. He was more than half sceptical, so far as the upper mind was concerned; but the under-consciousness was steeped in ideas derived from his early home and training, ideas of sacrifice, forgiveness, atonement, judgment—the common and immortal stock of Christianity. He had been brought up in a house pervaded by the crucifix, and by a mother who was ardently devout.
But why had God—if there was a God—brought this wonderful thing to pass? Never had his heart been so full of hatred as in that hour of lonely wandering on the moor, before he perceived the huddled figure lying by the stream. And, all in a moment, he had become his enemy’s proxy—his representative—in the last and tenderest service that man can render to man. He had played the part of son to Falloden’s dying father—had prayed for him from the depths of his heart, tortured with pity. And when Falloden came, with what strange eyes they had looked at each other!—as though all veils had dropped—all barriers had, for the moment, dropped away.
“Shall I hate him again to-morrow?” thought Radowitz. “Or shall I be more sorry for him than for myself? Yes, that’s what I felt!—so marvellously!”
So that when he went to Constance with his news, and under the emotion of it, saw the girl’s heart unveiled—“I was not jealous,” he thought. “I just wanted to give her everything!”
Yet, as the night passed on, and that dreary moment of the first awakening earth arrived, when all the griefs of mankind weigh heaviest, he was shaken anew by gusts of passion and despair; and this time for himself. Suppose—for in spite of all Sorell’s evasions and concealments, he knew very well that Sorell was anxious about him, and the doctors had said ugly things—suppose he got really ill?—suppose he died, without having lived?
He thought of Constance in the moonlit garden, her sweetness, her gratefulness to him for coming, her small, white “flower-face,” and the look in her eyes.
“If I might—only once—have kissed her—have held her in my arms!” he thought, with anguish. And rolling on his face, he lay prone, fighting his fight alone, till exhaustion conquered, and “he took the gift of sleep.”