WHENHorace returned to Harliflax it was night—too late even for an accepted lover to gain admittance to the widowed house of Mrs. Stenhouse, and Horace was not even an openly accepted lover. These ten days had changed him greatly. This monstrous crime had indeed germinated in his mind from the very hour of his return from London; but that passion of temptation was very different from the horror of unbearable suspense and anxiety which consumed him now. While he was still only about to do it, his mind was buoyed up by a hideous fascination, which carried him over time and space as though upon a devil’s wings. Now that he had done it, every hour was a staring, wide-eyedMedusa, watching and petrifying; and still, through the cold, creeping silence, there came no sound; no cry of the death-agony which he had contrived, nor shout of the avenger of blood behind; no sobbing forth of the dear life shed by his hands, and no cry of Murder! Murder!—only a convulsive whisper of the word among the grass and leaves, and secret spies of nature, which pricked him into madness, and turned the blood in his veins to fire. He was changed, imperceptibly to himself, but in the strangest way. Every day of this week in which he had been compassing his father’s death had made him more like his father. His face had lost its colour and roundness—the soft outline of youth was gone; and in its place had come a sharpened distinction of feature, unusual at his years. His hair, which, to his great wonder, came out in handfuls when he dressed it, fell lank, like that of the recluse at Marchmain; and even his dress took the same resemblance, and flew back from his figure, as he went, with his restless haste of motion, from street to street. But the sneer and the disdain hadalmost gone out of Horace’s face: he could no longer afford these light emotions. His whole soul was burnt up with passions more intense—self-horror—anxiety, more acute and devouring than ever was the anxiety of love, to know his father’s fate; and, above all, that overpowering certainty of personal guilt, which all the world and all its powers could never again loosen from his self-convicted heart.
It was night, and nobody saw him. Few knew him, besides, in these streets of Harliflax. He rushed to his lodgings, and found there were no letters there; then out again, and did not draw breath till he stood in the dark, on the opposite side of the way, looking into the bright moonlight at the house where Amelia Stenhouse slept the untroubled sleep of youth. There he stood in the depth of the night-shadow, looking how the night-radiance and illumination of that weird moon brought out the long, lofty line of terrace, the line of great houses of which Harliflax was proud. The night was so bright, and the air so still, that one slow figure,gliding along there in front of the high, silent houses, was caught and wrapped in a silvery mantle, and drawn along noiselessly, like a pigmy, in the great flood of silent light. So white on that side of the road—so black here where he stood, among the shadows where the devils and lovers of darkness congregate. But, Amelia, which was she? He raised his eyes to the window which he knew was Amelia’s, and tried to think of all the glories before him; fortune past counting, youth, love—nothing left out that was worth having, but—But!—that one miserable step out into the light across the blackness of darkness—the step which, God help his miserable brain, he was not about to take, buthad taken, be the consequences what they might. When he thought of it there, opposite Amelia’s window, standing in the darkness, his head swam and his tongue clove to his mouth. He had done it; he was not projecting, nor discussing, nor entertaining his subtle mind with the temptation; the temptation, with all its thrills of intoxicating excitement, its fascinations of fierceand hostile fancy—its wild impulses of passion—was over for ever, and for ever, and for ever!—and the victim, disenchanted, stood cold, looking always into the blanched face of the deed which he had done. And Horace could no longer think of Amelia; not of the delight of marrying, and carrying away, and making his own property of the beauty; not of the boundless wealth he should have to bestow on her one day; not of the thousand a-year which he believed would induce her to marry him immediately, and which for that sole reason, and no other, he had wrung out of Mr. Pouncet. He had pled his cause warmly with herself, and his love had blazed about her not so many days ago when he was at Harliflax; but he could not turn his thoughts to her now; he could not warm his torpid mind with remembering her beauty; he could not rouse his fierce animal passion. Something black and cold stood first in his mind between him and his fortune—between him and what he called happiness. Murder had overshadowed love, and killed it. Hehad no longer any thoughts to spare save for that horrible hag whom he had taken into his heart!
As he stood, however, thinking his own thoughts, it soon became vaguely visible to Horace that all was not entirely at rest in the house he was gazing at. Scarcely visible in the great flood of moonlight, there still was now and then the gleam of a light showing for a moment from one floor to another, as somebody went or came downstairs; and sounds began to be audible in the extreme stillness even where he stood. Shortly afterwards Stevens came to the door rubbing his eyes, and went down the street, with a sort of reluctant rapidity, to the doctor’s house at the corner. Horace comprehended it as well as though he had been within and knew all. Edmund was ill. Death was not to be defrauded of that little victim: Edmund was going to die. When the servant came back with the doctor, Horace crossed the road and entered with them, nobody observing him in the excitement—entered he scarcely knew why, with a morbid craving after death andsuffering. He was anxious to see how that child would meet the last adversary; curious to observe how the family would arrange itself around the deathbed of the little heir; the poor little heir! who had enjoyed for so short a time his childish importance, his eager liberality of intention. But Horace had no pity to spare for Edmund, or for any other person in the world.
Edmund Stenhouse was dying (as they thought) in the warm parlour where he had lived. He had been worse than usual for a day or two, and was laid there upon a sofa, so that he might not have the fatigue of removal; but though propped up with pillows, for the sake of his painful and hard breathing, he looked very little different from his usual condition. He was shouting out eagerly for pen and paper when Horace passed in at the door. He did not want the doctor; he would not be blistered any more, whatever the doctor said. He wanted somebody out of papa’s office; he was going to make his will, and die.
“I tell you, mamma, I’m not going to take any more physic!” cried the poor child, thrustingaside with his hasty, feeble hand the glassful of some stimulating mixture which the anxious woman held to him. “I’m going to die! I tell you I’ve made up my mind!—what’s the use of sending for doctors and stuff? Send for Scarsdale, or somebody. I’m going to make my will—I’m going to die!”
“I don’t believe he is, though,” said Horace, involuntarily coming forward, without very well knowing what he did. He was desperately interested, somehow, in this dread death which he had invoked. He was curious to see its workings, and how it approached; but he could not recognize that awful presence here.
Mrs. Stenhouse turned round with a little cry of recognition. There was a gleam of gratitude in her eyes: she could almost have taken into her arms the stranger who did not believe that Edmund was dying, and forgave Horace his former offences on the moment. “Oh, Mr. Scarsdale!—then youdon’tsee a great difference in him?” cried the poor woman, with a flutter at her heart. She couldtake courage even from that feeble flicker of hope.
“Oh, here’s Scarsdale,” said Edmund, with a gasp of hard-drawn breath. “I want you to write out my will directly—directly, do you hear? because I’m going to die; you’re to put it all down about me, Edmund Stenhouse, like papa’s—I’d do it myself, only I can’t write as well as a grown-up man; and I want to leave everything—except plenty of money for my mother and a little for the girls—to my brother Roger. Make haste, do you hear? because I’ll die first if you don’t be quick, and then what’s the good of your coming here?”
“Humour him,” said the doctor under his breath.
“Oh, doctor, is he so very, very bad?” cried poor foolish Mrs. Stenhouse, losing the morsel of heart she had picked up from Horace’s words.
“He is very much excited—humour him,” said the doctor authoritatively; “just now do exactly what he says. Thank heaven, there can’t be much harm done in this way even bya spoiled child. The law don’t recognize testators of ten years old.”
“Doctor, go home to bed, and don’t come if mamma should send for you again,” said little Edmund; “I can die all the same without you looking at me; but first I’ll make my will; I shall—and then I’ll die; doctor, go home to bed.”
“Thank you, I will,” said the doctor, yawning; “but don’t you be so very sure about dying, my young hero. I’ll see him to-morrow, Mrs. Stenhouse. Mind what I say,humourhim—he’s very much excited, but he’s no worse. Get him to sleep as soon as you can. Good night.”
The doctor went away, and the unnecessary commotion subsided a little. The lingering housemaid went to bed, feeling somewhat defrauded of her tears, and tragically disappointed that the end was not coming to-night to poor little Edmund’s tragi-comedy of life. So did Stevens, moralizing and very much disgusted at the interruption of his rest—“three nights all a-running!” said that injured man to himself, “and master, fromhe was took bad till he died, was only twenty-four hours;” while in the meanwhile a strange scene was taking place in the invalid’s parlour. There, in the close stifling atmosphere and under the subdued sick-room light, sat Horace writing—Horace with murder in his heart and a personal burden too overpowering to allow him to remember the share he had taken in his employer’s fraud, setting down mechanically, scarcely alive enough for a gleam of derision, the impotent will from the lips of that innocent, imperative, despotic child. Amelia herself had glanced into the room and withdrawn again contemptuously, without her lover perceiving her; but the youngest and gentlest of the three sisters was with Mrs. Stenhouse, to help her in her watching, and had already begun to slumber peacefully in a chair. The mother herself sat at the foot of the sofa watching her boy, with eyes enlarged and dilated by many a vigil, and by that constant fear and scrutiny of his face; while, propped up among his pillows, Edmund half sat, half lay, dictating, with many a digression, his arbitrary, generousintentions. The will was still incomplete, when sleep stole over the would-be testator. He drooped back among the cushions, and could no longer keep his fiery little eyes open. Was he dying with that last flutter of words, “my brother Roger,” about his lips? No, only falling safe into the restless sleep of a sick child. When his sharp little voice had died away, and all was silent in the room, the two by his bedside looked strangely into each other’s faces. What brought you here with your black thoughts, oh! dangerous, guilty man? He rose up alone in the still house inhabited of women, feeling for an instant a vague sensation of that power and freedom which the strong, unfettered by either law or virtue, may feel among the weak. What was to hinder him from ending by a touch that frail child’s life?—he could have done it. What was to hinder him from going up in the darkness, and lifting out of her safe rest that beautiful Amelia? He stood looking for a moment at the timid woman before him, with a hundred suggestions and possibilities of additional guilt pricking him into life. Whatwas it to him now what he did, he who had made the plunge and done the deepest crime of nature? But he only looked at her a moment, with a savage consciousness of his power to outrage and devastate; and then laughed a short wild laugh, and went out as suddenly as he had come. Poor Mrs. Stenhouse stole out to fasten the door after him, with a momentary sensation of relief, as though she had escaped from a wild beast; and, coming back again, relapsed into an anxious study once more of Edmund’s little pale sharp face. Edmund’s will, magnificent and powerless, his last toy and plaything, lay on the table beside him. Was Edmund to live or to die?
AFEWdays after this scene Roger Musgrave and Sir John Armitage arrived at Harliflax. Edmund was still living, and not less life-like than he had been for years, though his will was by this time signed and sealed. This will had been a ready means of renewing the flirtation, which was all the beautiful Amelia owned to maintaining with her father’s clerk. Amelia was sadly tired of her mourning, and its inevitable decorums; she was glad to throw herself in Horace’s way when he came to finish that child’s will, which he did next morning, for Amelia’s sake. Amelia wanted to ask him about this will; papa had been very unjust to the rest for Edmund’s sake,and now somebody told her that the little wretch (though she was sure she had cried her eyes out about him, and hoped with all her heart he would get better) was making a will, leaving everything to mamma’s son by her first marriage, whom none of them had ever seen. Was it true?—coulda little spoiled monkey like that, only eleven years old, make a will?—had anybody any right to give papa’s property away from his children? Mr. Scarsdale knew it was not of herself she was thinking, but poor Eliza and Fanny—what was to become of them ifsome onedid not think of their interests?—for mamma cared for nothing in the world but little Edmund and her other son. All this flood of question and statement poured upon Horace, who incautiously set the beautiful doubter’s mind at rest by telling her that Edmund’s will was as useless as any other toy of Edmund’s, if the child died. Horace proceeded immediately to enlarge upon his own prospects, and the income he had already secured, but Amelia’s heart was shut against him. She was not more cruel or cold-bloodedthan a great many other people; she did not wish Edmund’s death; but that being a thing which everybody calculated upon as “rather to be desired than otherwise for his own sake, poor child,” Amelia’s spirits rose a little with the idea of finding herself an heiress, and once more regaining command of the house. That sickly child made a vast difference in various matters to Amelia; without Edmund she could easily subdue her mother; with Edmund, she was only Mr. Stenhouse’s eldest daughter, with two or three thousand pounds; but without him she was the mistress of a very pretty fortune. Perhaps it was not much wonder if the thoughts of the ambitious and uneducated young beauty availed themselves of this prospect without too much delicacy, and thrust Edmund out of the way. However, Horace found it very difficult to arrest her attention to the expression of his own wishes and arrangements. She was supremely indignant at the thought of anyone speaking to her of marriage at such a time. “Look at my mourning, Mr. Scarsdale, and think of Edmund, poor, dearfellow!” cried the virtuous Amelia. If Amelia came in for her proper share of papa’s money, she saw no reason why she should make anything less than a very brilliant match. So after she had beguiled her tedium by means of Horace, as long as, in the circumstances of the house, that was permissible, she went away stately and affronted, though by no means casting him off even now. He was not afraid; he could not have been in less real alarm if she had been his wife, but he wanted sorely to get back to the old frenzy of his first love-passion; he wanted to linger about her and on her, and make sure that she belonged to him. For her and for fortune he had played these terrible stakes, which only he and God knew of; and it was tantalizing to have the prize of his wickedness drawn away from him, when, perhaps, if he but knew, the obstacle was removed already, and fortune incomprehensible and stupendous, big enough to have purchased twice an Amelia, was already in his hand.
But when Horace came next to the house he found a still greater barrier arisen betweenhimself and Amelia. She no longer wanted to be amused—she was independent of him: he might come or he might go, and Amelia did not care. A new life had visited Mrs. Stenhouse’s roof and family. Roger, the unknown brother, was there like a son at home, charming the little invalid, who had left all his wealth to him, out of the feverish excitement and unwholesome primary place, which were killing Edmund; warming his mother’s heart into a late summer of peace and thankfulness; making himself acceptable even to the pretty sisters who admired him, and whom he admired. But it was not Roger who had displaced Horace with Amelia. A young man who was her brother, and, consequently, not to be fascinated, was of no account in the eyes of the beauty; but Sir John Armitage, if he was not very young, had many other qualities which made up for that want, and Sir John had already concluded to himself that he had seen no such fine woman since the days when he was young himself, and beauty was more abundant. Amelia did not lose an hour with the excellent baronet; she had notonly baited the hook, but landed her fish long before anybody else suspected her; and as for Horace, though that pretty by-play roused another demon within him, he had still no suspicions of Amelia—or rather, so absolute was his own self-regard, that he did not believe it possible thathecould be set aside for any man or woman in the world.
“Nephew of Colonel Sutherland—hum—Scarsdale—happy to make your acquaintance,” said Sir John, doubtfully. “We didn’t expect to meet you here of all places in the world; did we, Roger, boy? Got something to say to you by-and-bye, Mr. Scarsdale—if you’ll do us the honour—about that confounded fellow Pouncet, and this—this young fellow here.”
“When you please, Sir John,” said Horace, with a giddiness about him scarcely bearable. Sir John was playing with a newspaper on the table—the Kenlisle paper, which always came there. Perhaps the notice, the intimation, the seal of all his breathless terrors and ghastly expectations lay there; but it was as unattainable as though strong walls had surroundedit, guarded by the trifling fingers of that stranger’s hand. This newspaper, however—the common vulgar broadsheet—kept thus in his sight, yet beyond his reach, rapt the mind of Horace out of all excitement as to any other question. He knew well enough, with the dull certainty which other matters had in his mind, that Musgrave and his friend must have heard from Mrs. Stenhouse of his own connection with Mr. Pouncet, and call to the deathbed of her husband; but he felt no apprehension about their questions, cared nothing about the matter—in short, cared for nothing in the world at this moment but that paper rustling under the baronet’s careless hand.
“Mr. Scarsdale is Edmund’s man of business,” cried Amelia. “Oh, poor dear little Edmund! I never shall forget that scene! Fancy, Sir John, Edmund taking it into his head that he was going to die, frightening poor mamma out of her wits, and sending for the doctor and Mr. Scarsdale long past midnight, when everybody was asleep. I peeped in at the door just after the doctor went, and there was poor Mr. Scarsdale at the table writingEdmund’s will. I had such a laugh after I knew all was safe, and my little brother no worse than usual; for, only think of Mr. Scarsdale humouring Edmund, when he knew it was no good, and writing his will!”
“It was very kind of Mr. Scarsdale, Amelia,” said Mrs. Stenhouse.
“Oh, it might be, mamma; but wasn’t it an odd scene?” cried the beauty, appealing to Sir John, and laughing at her own penetration. That was Amelia’s kind of wit—a wit which, being always played against one suitor for the amusement of another, was wonderfully successful. The baronet was extremely tickled with “the scene;” the fair artist went over it again for his behalf, with a ludicrous sketch of Horace, “though he knew it was no good” making little Edmund’s will. While this went on, Horace gradually wakened up into a grim surprise at this ridicule, and began to perceive that the object of his love really meant to hold him up to derision, and had changed her tone. The discovery roused him into something of his former self. What had he not done to gain possession of this girl? But toher he was only a common one of her many admirers, to be laughed at and cast aside in his turn. Dead to all better emotions, Horace had yet a little of common life left in him through his intense arrogance and self regard, and this pin-prick found it out.
“When Edmund called upon me to help him, it was not the first time I had been honoured by the confidence of the head of the house,” said Horace, with a sinister impulse of revenge—“the other scene might not have struck Miss Stenhouse as amusing, but, as it happened, it was more interesting to me.”
As he spoke, everybody looked at Horace. And perhaps then everybody noticed, for the first time, the change which had fallen upon the young man—putting their various interpretations upon it, as was natural. Amelia saw nothing but a desperate struggle of passion, love, and jealousy, most flatteringly tragic, in the white fever which consumed him. Sir John regarded him with his head a little on one side, and made a moral remark upon the effects of dissipation, in his ownmind; while Mrs. Stenhouse, leaping at the first troublesome idea which occurred to her, thought instantly, as he had meant them all to think, upon her husband’s death-bed disclosure, and how it might affect her son.
“Oh, Mr. Scarsdale!” she cried, pleadingly, “you will tell Roger—you will tell Sir John, his kind friend, what it was that my dear Mr. Stenhouse had to say? It could be nothing against my son,” she continued, nervously taking Roger’s hand. Sir John roused himself up a little. It was much more agreeable flirting with Amelia; but, of course, as he had come to Harliflax about this matter, it was important to hear what the young man might have to say.
“If your late husband put his reputation into my hands, do you suppose I am going to betray him?” said Horace to Mrs. Stenhouse; but it was quite loud enough for everybody to hear.
“Mrs. Stenhouse will forgive you that—for her son’s sake; we are all frail, and nobody can blame the defunct,” said the baronet, with a hasty bow to the widow.“Come, my boy, out with it; or at least let’s have a little private conversation, Scarsdale—there’s a good fellow; a secret is the greatest humbug in the world—never does anybody any good to keep it. Should have been able to bring the late Mr. Stenhouse to reason, I have no doubt, if I could have seen him. My good fellow, with Mrs. Stenhouse’s permission, step downstairs with me.”
“Oh, do please, if it’s a secret, tell it here. I love a secret of all things,” cried Amelia.
But Amelia was cowed a little. She had caught Horace’s wild eye, where so many fires lay latent and smouldering. How could she tell what the secret might be? She was vaguely afraid in the midst of her curiosity. If he had gone downstairs with Sir John, Amelia would have followed them, and listened at the door.
“May I have the paper to look at?” said Horace, seizing it suddenly, as Sir John rose. “No, I do not trade in my friend’s secrets. Mrs. Stenhouse, good morning. I shall send back the paper, and I will see you again before I go.”
So saying, Horace left the room almost before any one was aware—before any one, save Amelia, saw what he was going to do. She, foreseeing his intention, vanished while he was still speaking, and waylaid him on the staircase.
“Oh, Mr. Scarsdale, was it something very dreadful?” said the breathless Amelia, with a pretty affectation of alarm.
“Do you care about your father’s reputation?” said Horace, with one of his old familiar sneers.
“I—don’t know—that was papa’s own business—if he did not mind, why should we?” said Amelia, with a toss of her pretty head.
“But suppose I had something to say which could make it quite sure that Edmund’s will was of no good, Miss Stenhouse?” said the vindictive lover—“suppose I knew of a creditor who could empty this pretty house, and all your purses, and leave you nothing—what then would you have to say to me?”
The beautiful Amelia stood dumb for a moment, looking at him—trembling for herproblematical co-heiresship—trembling lest she might have to forswear Sir John, and no longer dream of being called “my lady”—trembling most of all before the fiery eyes fixed upon her with so intent a gaze. “What should I say?” said the troubled flirt, with a little gasp—“why, that you were bound to make up for it somehow, you cruel creature—you who were to be so very rich, too;” and Amelia escaped, scared, when he chose to permit her—making up her mind to do anything in the world rather than marry this violent lover; while he went downstairs, roused by these last words into a renewed frenzy of excitement, carrying the Kenlisle paper in his hand.
The paper, which perhaps brought him news of hissuccess, and that the vast unsunned hoards of his old progenitor were already his; the paper which he dared not read, for fear of attracting notice, in the dim cowardice of guilt, till he had shut himself up in his own room. But there was nothing in it; not a syllable in it about Marchmain or any sudden death. Had they both perished—both master and servant, in that lonely house on the moor? Or did the recluse of Marchmain live a charmed life?
TWOdays after, the same party met again in Mrs. Stenhouse’s drawing-room. Horace had eluded all attempts on the part of Roger and Sir John to see or have any conversation with him; but he could not keep away from that only place where he had a chance of forgetting himself, or, at least, of counterbalancing one passion with another. He could not explain to himself why he stayed in Harliflax. It was against all his interests; it was trifling with Mr. Pouncet; it was exposing himself to a hundred risks, and leaving the citadel of the business to which he had bound himself undefended. But Horace cared no longer for Mr. Pouncet’s credit, or for his own income. The young man was desperate: he was ready atany moment, in pure recklessness, to have flung that secret at anybody’s head whom it had a chance of harming, or rendering unhappy, though, with a characteristic sullen obstinacy, he kept it out of reach of those whom it might have served. Nor could he any longer discern, out of the fiery mists which blurred his future, any prospects of his own; he could not make any definite stand upon that visionary thousand pounds a-year which he had extorted from Mr. Pouncet; he could not think, in that lurid haze out of which everything around him rose indistinct, like a phantom, of such a certain and settled act as marriage, with a household and steady beginning of life in its train. No such thing was practicable to the unhappy young man. He might have found some wild solace in breaking through the bounds of decorous life, and persuading Amelia Stenhouse to elope with him; but, except that, nothing tempted his fascinated mind. He could only sit and wait for the explosion—the terrible intelligence which, sooner or later, must come to him from Marchmain.
But he was once more in Mrs. Stenhouse’s drawing-room, where there was no longer any newspaper to excite him out of his senses—calmly seated among people who were pursuing the common way of life, without any stronger stimulant than a flirtation or common project of marriage among them. Sir John, whose indolence was no match for the obstinacy of Horace, was carrying on, as well as he could, the talk with Amelia, which the entrance of “that cub” had interrupted; while Amelia herself did her best to subdue the tone of that exceedingly interesting consultation, in acknowledgment of the presence of her too ardent lover. Somehow, Horace’s entrance, and all the restrained passion, unintelligible to them, which he carried about him, made the whole party uneasy. Amelia remembered with terror that, if provoked, he knew of somebody who could turn them out of doors, and leave them penniless. Mrs. Stenhouse regarded him with a vague awe, as holding in his hands at once her husband’s good name and the well-being of her son; while Musgrave, with a good deal of naturalexasperation, sat in the same room with the man who was in the secret of some conspiracy against himself, yet showed no compunction towards him, and who had tried to blacken his youthful character to his dearest friends. Nobody pretended that he was welcome in that house—not even timid Mrs. Stenhouse nor Amelia; yet he went—secure in his power;—went and set himself by Amelia’s elbow, turning his passionate looks upon her, while, from one cause and another, nobody dared venture to say to him how little welcome he was.
That day, however, destroyed the strange incubus to which his presence had grown. The post came in while Horace sat in Mrs. Stenhouse’s drawing-room. Roger had some letters, and opened them without waiting to be alone. When he had glanced over one he turned doubtfully, yet with some eagerness, towards the visitor. “Mr. Scarsdale,” he said, quietly, “Colonel Sutherland is at Marchmain.”
Horace did not fall down, or cry out, as he might have done; but, in the extremity of hisstartled horror, he rose bolt upright, and stood with his face blanched out of all natural colour. He could not speak, it was evident, for a minute; then he said, with a strange blank voice out of his throat, “My father is dead!”
“No, not dead—not so bad as that—but ill, I confess,” said Roger, kindly, quite melted by what seemed to him an overflowing of natural feeling; “only ill; don’t look so alarmed—not even seriously or alarmingly ill, so far as Colonel Sutherland says. Pray, read the letter yourself.”
Horace took the letter mechanically, and sat down again, holding it up before his face. He could not see the writing, which swam and floated in variable lines before him. He had enough to do to control himself, that nobody might see the wild tremor, exultation, horror, which possessed him. And yet what did it mean?—not dead, but ill! His potion, surely must have done better work. Not dead, only ill? The words came to his very lips unaware. What did it mean?
“Take some wine, Mr. Scarsdale; you lookquite ill. Nay, nay, perhaps it isn’t anything to be anxious about,” said Mrs. Stenhouse, stealing round the table with the charitable cordial to Horace’s elbow. “How you did comfort me, to be sure, the other night about Edmund!—and that came true. Drink this to give you back your colour, and don’t take on so; I hope your father will be spared to so good a son!”
“What do you mean?” cried Horace, hoarsely; “do you mean to taunt me?—as good a son as he was a father! Thank you, thank you! I was startled. I’m going off for Marchmain; good-bye.”
He crushed up the letter in his hand, and went away hurriedly; but almost before they had begun to wonder and talk about him, came back and thrust his head in at the door.
“Musgrave,” said Horace, in a broken voice, “when I come back, if—if I come back—I’ll tell you something to your benefit. I say it freely, without any man asking me—I promise you I will.”
With this mysterious intimation he disappeared once more, going out from amongthem upon his dismal way, leaving a strange suggestion of evil in everybody’s mind. Great misery, it was clear enough, was in this sudden intimation. Was it the agonized apprehension of love fearing death?—what was it?—for of all the unlikely things in the world, that little company could have guessed at anything sooner than the truth.
“But I believe he expects to come into a great deal of money when his father dies,” said Amelia; “not a common fortune—such a deal! I daresay that was why he looked so strange when he went away.”
“And, oh, how doyouknow, Amelia?” asked her next sister.
“I wish you would not ask ridiculous questions,” said Amelia, casting down her eyes with a pretty look of embarrassment, and a blush and simper, intended for the benefit of the baronet. “I know, of course, because—because Mr. Scarsdale told me; how else could I know?”
And Sir John Armitage saw, as clearly as if she had described it, a presumptuous proposal on the part of “that cub,” backed upby promises of fortune, which the beautiful Amelia’s delicate mind had remained totally unmoved to hear of; and entirely subdued by her fascinations, the bewitched baronet made up his own mind summarily. He flattered himself there was not much fear of rejection; and how famously that beautiful figure, which bent so often, and with such winning grace, towards him, would brighten the great rooms of Armitage Park.
Thus the waters closed in placid circles, widening out into smiles of well-pleased fortune, around the spot where Horace Scarsdale disappeared; and one of the great stakes he had played his deadly play for, slid out of his reach into the polished hands of a quiet spectator, who staked nothing. But he did not know that; he thought of nothing—not even of Amelia—as he rushed along to the railway, and flew by that iron road, at the swiftest pace, to the nearest neighbouring town he could reach in the vicinity of Lanwoth Moor; he was beyond thinking in the extremity of his haste and desperation. The black wings were spread over the lonely house.Death, whom he had invoked, was coming—his fortune would soon be all his own; but there was never spectator at a tragedy who held his breath for its consummation as Horace Scarsdale did, rushing out of his own black, unrepentant remorse and misery to Marchmain.
HOWthat dark interval of time had passed at Marchmain no one could tell—for Peggy, the only individual who could have known, had long ceased to speculate on her master’s sentiments and feelings, and learned to content herself with things as they came. But just as Colonel Sutherland, in single-minded devotion to the interests of his young friend Roger, and an honest and simple desire to set right the harm which he supposed to have been done by his nephew, had drawn close in his circles of laborious but unprofitable investigation to Lanwoth Moor, Peggy’s attention had been called to her master’s bodily condition. He had spent an agitated and restless night, as she could hear by his motions in his ownroom, and, for the first time in twenty years, did not get up in the morning. When Peggy went to him, alarmed by this extraordinary occurrence, she found him in bed, paralysed in one side, unable to speak, his face somewhat distorted, and everything helpless about him except his eyes. It was evidently and beyond any doubt “a stroke,” and poor Peggy, alone in her solitude, and not knowing what to do—afraid to leave him to seek assistance, and unable to ascertain what were his own wishes—put the disordered room tidy by instinct in the first place, until she was driven out of it, scared and breathless, by those eyes which followed her movements everywhere. “Like as if an evil spirit had ta’en possession,” she said to herself, as she went quicker than usual in her fright and perplexity down the stairs; and Peggy described many a day after how it was like an angel of mercy to hear “Mr. Edward, that is now the Cornel, the Lord bless him,” knocking at the door all of a sudden, and asking if all was well at Marchmain. “I tould him all was as ill as ill could be; and he never so much as camin to rest, but went forth with his staff in his hand five mile of road for the doctor and help,” said Peggy; “and ye may all tell me about his own business and other things he had in hand, and owght ye please, but no man shall make me believe, if he preaches till Christmas, that it was aught but the very Lord himsel’ in grace and mercy that sent the Cornel that morning, and no other, to the master’s door.”
That was a busy day for Colonel Sutherland. He sent not only the nearest country doctor, but an express to Kenlisle for a more noted physician there, and sent abundant help to Peggy, and everything which the surgeon could suggest as likely to be of use. The old soldier’s heart of pity yearned over the unfortunate man who had shut himself out from all the tender charities of love. He despatched a letter instantly to Susan, bidding her come at once to nurse her father; and when he had done everything that his kind heart could suggest, went back slowly and thoughtfully across the moor, with very sad thoughts in that good heart. Not because hethought it sad to die; the Colonel had too many waiting for him on the other side of the river to compassionate those who were arriving at that conclusion of trouble; but it was sad to consider the ending of this melancholy and miserable life. Better for himself, for his children, for everybody within his influence, would it have been, if twenty years ago the grave had received him into its harmless quiet, instead of this miserable seclusion. And now, without even that privilege of a conscious pause upon the grave’s brink, which sweetens so many memories, and endears so many of the dead, who, living, were less loveable, he was going away, this unhappy man. No wonder the tender heart of the old soldier was sad. It had been better not to be born than thus to die.
When Colonel Sutherland returned to Marchmain he was reluctant to enter the sick-room, fearing that even there the imprisoned mind, debarred of ordinary expression, would chafe at his presence, and put a cruel interpretation upon his kindness; but the importunities of Peggy, the silent surpriseof the surgeon, and indeed the forlorn and pitiful loneliness of the patient himself, overpowered his objections. He went in and spoke to the stricken man lying there dumb upon his bed. He detailed all the circumstances of his own arrival, dwelling upon its accidental character—he spoke of Susan, he spoke of Horace—for the doctor had declared that to restore his speech and faculties it would be well to rouse him, even to passion; but all without effect. Mr. Scarsdale lay in his dressing-gown among the bedclothes, in that dead silence which looked almost malicious, and of purpose, contrasted with the wild watchfulness of his eyes. One hand lay powerless and numb beside him; the other held with a tight grasp some folds of the white coverlid. There he lay stretched out motionless, attempting no notice of the remedies they applied to him, suffering himself to be moved and shifted about like a log, but following every movement, every gleam of light, every passing shadow, with those eyes so desperately alive and awake. When he had once entered thatmelancholy sick-room, the Colonel for very pity could not leave it. He sat down by the side of the bed, his whole heart moved with a compassion unspeakable. He could not bear to think that no kindred blood or familiar voice was near the unhappy sufferer. Peggy, it was true, went and came; but Peggy was afraid of her master, whom she had served so long and faithfully. She was superstitious, with her long solitude and broken spirit; she thought her master had already gone to his account, and that it was some malignant spirit which looked out of these wild waking eyes.
After two days of this hopeless lethargy, during which Colonel Sutherland never left his post, but watched night and day, dozing sometimes for an hour in the arm-chair by the bedside, Susan arrived, under charge of Patchey, to whom the thoughtful Colonel had written. It was a strange home-coming for Susan, in the midst of all her sweet new hopes and beginning thrills of life. But when Susan, instead of being taken into Peggy’s motherly arms, and kissed, and blessed, andcried over, as she expected, felt Peggy, after her first scream of welcome, bear heavily upon her shoulder, and drop off into a dead faint of exhaustion and over-excitement, she saw at once this was no time to think of herself. When Peggy was better, she took off her travelling dress, and went up without a moment’s delay to her father’s room, where Uncle Edward sat, pale with watching. Susan, too, was shocked and frightened more than she dared say by the sick man’s attentive eyes; but she took the nurse’s place with a natural and instinctive readiness, and begged her uncle to go away and get some rest. Why should they watch him with such careful, tender anxiety—the banished daughter and the insulted friend? Why, in this dismal need of his did these two come, whom he had sent away from him, and come as though that imprisoned spirit which they watched had been a heart of love? But nobody could tell in this world whether such thoughts touched the heart of the recluse, as he lay unmoving, unsleeping, speechless, upon that dreadful bed. The days whichhad now passed since he took any nourishment, the unnatural state in which he lay, made his condition, unhopeful enough at first, entirely hopeless now. He was dying slowly, no one knowing how it went with him in the depths of his hidden soul, and no one able to interpret if any late compunctions, any meltings of the shut-up heart, or touches of human charity, were shining at length, at last, when all utterance was over, out of these wakeful eyes.
When Susan took her uncle’s place for the next long night—when through all the silent hours she could not move without attracting these sleepless looks, which were all that remained of this man’s will and mind—Susan got frightened in spite of herself. So alive, so waking, so desperately conscious were these eyes, that the poor girl fell down on her knees by the bedside, and implored her father to speak to her.
“Only speak, say anything, if it was to curse me!” said poor Susan. It was impossible to believe that he could not if he would. And then one gleam of expression different fromtheir usual strain of watchfulness appeared in Mr. Scarsdale’s eyes; a strange gleam, as if tears were in them; a momentary melting of the hard heart, a wandering movement of the unparalyzed hand to lay it on her head. Susan hid her face, weeping aloud, the touch going to her heart as never tender father’s blessing went, and her whole young soul heaving within her, at the thought how little she had loved him, he who relented over her and blessed her thus under the stony hand of death. Never in all his hard life had so sweet a gush of human gratitude followed any act of Mr. Scarsdale. It was well for him that it was his last.
ATthat moment when Susan, full of tenderness and compunction, knelt by her father’s bedside, and Mr. Scarsdale’s hand still trembled upon her hair—token, all too late, of the love which might have been—the door of the room opened stealthily for a moment, and Horace looked in. Whether it was that Mr. Scarsdale had preserved the sense of hearing as distinctly as he seemed to do that of sight, or that a strange magic of hostility drew his eyes to that quarter, it is impossible to say; but when Horace’s gaze fell upon the bed and its ghastly inhabitant, his father’s eyes met his, with a look which all the world and all its pleasures could never efface from the young man’s mind. He staggered back, startled outof all self-control, and uttering, in spite of himself, a cry, half of defiance, half of horror; while the unhappy father of these two children, thrusting, with the force of extremity, Susan’s fair head away from him, swayed round, by a desperate impulse, his half-lifeless body, and turned his face to the wall. Startled out of her filial delusion, and with her faculties confused by the sudden thrust away, which was given with feverish force, Susan stumbled to her feet in sudden terror. Horace was standing ghastly pale by the door, his bloodless lips apart, his eyes dilated, his manner so frightfully excited and unnatural, that Susan’s first impulse was to interpose the frail protection of her own body between the helpless father and the frantic son. As she stood alarmed, protecting the bed, Horace gave a ghastly sneer at her, and said, “Too late!” hoarsely out of his throat. He saw well enough that she was afraid of him, and meant to defend her father; but nothing in the world could have initiated Susan into the horrible meaning of that “too late.” When she thought of it, she supposed her brother tomean too late to be recognized, to ask his father’s pardon—perhaps to gain his father’s blessing, as she had done; and with that idea her feeling changed.
“Not too late, Horace,” said poor Susan—“he is sensible—he knowsme. But oh! before you speak to him, call Peggy first, and bid her tell the doctor. The doctor said he was to be called whenever papa moved.”
“The doctor! What doctor?—what does he want with a doctor?” said Horace, in his hoarse, dreadful voice.
“The doctor is in the house—Uncle Edward would not let him go away. Hehasmoved—he has all but spoken! Oh! call the doctor, Horace!” cried Susan, eagerly; “perhaps it may be a sign for the better! Call Peggy—she will tell you where he is!”
But Horace stood still on the threshold of the fatal room, looking round with wild, investigating eyes, as anxious, as desperate, as the sufferer’s own. Where was it?—where was that little medicine-chest, which had dealt a slower death than he expected, but which, if it were found, might snatch the cup fromhis own lips, and abridge his lifelong punishment? Where was it? The dying man upon that bed, dreadful as was his son’s curiosity about him, and terrible as the shock had been when their eyes met, was less important now than that chest and its tell-tale contents. He gazed around with his wild eyes—so like his father’s—looking at everything but his father, who lay motionless, his dread eyes closed now, and his face turned towards the wall. Susan, in wild impatience, stamped her foot upon the floor, hoping by that means to attract somebody. There was a stir below, as of some one who heard her; and Horace, roused by the sound, approached the bedside cautiously. “He is dead!” her brother whispered in Susan’s ears. It was the middle of the night, dark and still; and the poor girl, standing here between the dying man—who, perhaps, had died in that dreadful moment—and the living man, who looked like a maniac, lost all her self-command. She cried aloud in the extremity of her fear and anguish. Was Horacemad?And in that miserable moment, with his rebel son returnedto vex his soul, had her father passed away?
The stamping of Susan’s foot on the floor, the sound of some commotion in the sick-room, and at last her voice calling out in uncontrollable terror, brought all the other inmates of the house to the room—Peggy, the doctor half awake, the nurse, and Uncle Edward, all of whom, at Susan’s earnest instance, had lain down to seek an hour’s sleep. Among all these anxious people Horace looked still more like a spectre—but after another moment spent in inquisitive inspection of the room, he turned to the doctor and overpowered him with questions. As if in braggadocio and daring exhibition of his want of feeling, he urged the surgeon into descriptions of the complaint: what it was—and how it came on—and what were its particular features. While the astonished doctor replied as shortly as possible, and turned his back upon the heartless questioner, Horace hovered more and more closely about his father’s bed. Another fit produced by the sudden appearance of his son had almost completed the mortal work which was going on in the emaciatedframe of the recluse. It did not matter to anybody now that those eyes were faintly open, which a little while ago were full of unspeakable things; the force and the life had ebbed out of those windows of the soul, and the patient no longer knew anything of the agitated consultations going on over him, or of the hideous curiosity with which his son thrust into those, asking questions which horrified the hearers. When the doctor said that there were complications in this case, which made it difficult to treat, the young man laughed a short, hoarse, horrible laugh, and asked “how long do you think he will last?” in a tone which made them shudder. They were all afraid of his haggard figure as it swayed to and fro about the bed.
“You’ve been drinking, sir,” said the doctor, in authoritative disgust. “You can’t do any good here—be quiet and go to bed. He distresses the patient; some of you take him away.”
“Mr. Horry, come with me,” said Peggy, laying her hand upon his shoulder. He followed her out of the room without sayinganything. Hewasmad, crazed, intoxicated; but with a deadlier poison than was ever distilled from corn or vine!
The old woman took him into his own room and left him there. She shook her head at him in sad displeasure, but understood nothing of the tragic misery which made him mad.
“I bid ye not to grieve,” she said, reproachfully. “The Lord knows he’s been little of a father to you, that you should break your heart for him; but be dacent, Mr. Horry, be dacent; if it’s no for love’s sake, as is no possible, yet have respect to death.”
When Peggy left him Horace buried his haggard face in those hands which had grown thin and sharp like the claws of a bird of prey. “Have respect to death!”—to the death which he had invoked—to the destruction he had made. He sank down prostrate upon the floor, and lay there in a heap, helpless, overcome by the horror of what he had done. The strength of an army could not have kept him from Marchmain at that terrible crisis and climax of his fate; but nowwhen he was here, he could but lie prostrate in the wildest hopeless misery, or, mad with his guilt, peer like a ghoul about his father’s death-bed. It was easier to do that, noting horribly every slow step of the approaching presence, than it was to lie here in the dismal creeping silence, with that footstep creaking on the stair, and chilling the night, and a hundred deadly sprites of vengeance shouting Murder! murder! all night long, into his miserable ear.
BEFOREthat night was over the terrible visitor whom Horace believed his own act to have brought to Marchmain entered the lonely house; but the unhappy parricide did not hear or see the entrance of that last messenger. While his father sank gradually into the longer and surer quietude, sleep, feverish and painful, fell upon the son. He had not slept for many nights, and his great excitement, added to the fatigue of his journey, had completely exhausted his frame. The confused and painful commotion in the adjoining apartment as the mortal moment approached; the sobs of Susan, who saw Death for the first time, and found the sight of those last agonies intolerable and beyondher strength; the solemn bustle afterwards, when the last offices had to be performed—were all insufficient to awake Horace out of the deep but unquiet slumber, over which phantoms and fever brooded. He lay as Peggy had left him, in his travel-soiled and disordered dress, fatigued, haggard, bearing such weariness and exhaustion in his face, that it would have taken harder hearts than those of his sister and uncle to close themselves against him. But Horace was as unconscious of the visit of Susan and Uncle Edward as of any other incident of the night. They stood over him as he slept, talking in whispers; but those soothing voices did not enter into the fever of his dream. Susan was crying quietly, every word she spoke producing a fresh overflow of tears—natural tears, which she could not help shedding, but soon must wipe away. Nothing less was possible to her tender heart, and it would have been strange if the end of that unloving and unlovely life had produced anything more. “He looks so tired—poor Horace! Oh! Uncle Edward, he is not so hard-hearted aspeople thought!—he will feelthisvery much; think how troubled he looked last night,” said Susan.
“Yes, Susan,” said Uncle Edward, with a sigh, “more than troubled; but I do not blame him; it was not his fault—the evil was done before he was born.”
“What evil, uncle?” asked Susan, looking up with wonder through her tears.
“My poor child, it would but horrify you,” said Uncle Edward. “I cannot think but Horace, somehow or other, has found it out. Your brother lying there, Susan, is now one of the richest men in England; your grandfather’s will passed over your poor father, and left everything to Horace. Ah, Susan! nothing but passion, and misery, and black revenge on one side and the other; and look at this young heir—poor Horace! they have heaped up money for him, but they have already robbed him of all the bloom and promise of his life.”
“You don’t think he has done anything very wrong, Uncle Edward?” said Susan, trembling and crying more and more.
For looking down upon that face, all darkly pale in its sleeping passion, with its deep-drawn lines of pain and stealthy curves about the closed eyes, it was hard to think of misery inflicted by other people. Misery self-made, and guilt actual and personal, lay even in the sleep of Horace Scarsdale’s face. Susan’s mind did not take in or comprehend that statement about her grandfather and his wealth, and “one of the richest men in England.” The words had no meaning to her at that melancholy moment. She thought only of the brother of her childhood in that heavy sleep of exhaustion and misery, thrown down in a heap like one who had not even heart enough to stretch himself out in common comfort; and her heart yearned over him, whatever he might have done.
“I think, perhaps,” said the Colonel, with hesitation, “that the journey and the excitement, and, perhaps, taking something he was not used to, overcame him last night. Sleep is the best thing for him; let us leave him quiet—he will be better when he wakes.”
And so they left him; Colonel Sutherlandreally believing that to brave himself for a scene which must excite him painfully, but where real grief was not to be expected from him, Horace had come intoxicated to his father’s death-bed, and Susan half-disgusted, half-comforted to believe that his maniac looks of last night might be attributed to such a cause. They went away, the Colonel to take an hour’s sleep after his long visit, and Susan to weep out her heart, thinking over that one touch of natural sympathy, which, beyond death and the grave, gave her more hold of love upon her father, than she had ever before felt herself to possess. The morning was kindling over the moor, brightening the golden-blossomed gorse, and glowing over the purple beds of heather; but the blinds were drawn down and the shutters closed in Marchmain; the obscure and gloomy atmosphere of death reigned in the house. Peggy sat by the kitchen-fire, with her white apron thrown over her head—her mind lost in long trains of recollection, sometimes her wearied frame yielding to a half-hour’s sleep, sometimes her troubled thoughts overflowing in a few naturaltears. The woman who had come to be nurse and household assistant dozed on the other side of the fire. Colonel Sutherland, very grave, and full of the thoughts which death brings in his train, sat alone in the darkened dining-room, taking an hour’s sleep as he said—though in reality the old soldier had only read his morning chapter in his old Bible, and was composing himself with the tender strength of these words of God; while Susan, withdrawn in her own room, gave the dead man his dues, and paid that duty of nature, a woman’s lamentations, to the concluded life.
In this languor and stillness of the death-consecrated house, where no agony of living grief reigned, but only the natural pathos and the natural rest, Horace awoke at bright mid-day from his unnatural sleep. Accustomed to the noises of a town, and to the perpetual wasting of his own burning thoughts, the stillness struck him strangely, with a chill calm which he could not explain. He sat up mechanically, and put the lank disordered hair from his face, trying to recollect where he was and what had happened. Looking round at that room, strangeyet familiar, the shelter of all his youthful years, he could almost have supposed that everything else was but a hideous dream, and that he himself was nothing worse or guiltier than the rebellious lad who once slept and dreamt within these homely walls. But then bit by bit the light brightened upon him; he traced out the whole black history line by line; the first suggestion of this guilt at which he had shuddered—the returning thoughts which grew familiar to him—the deed itself, black and breathless in its stealthy and secret crime; and now the consummation had come! At that thought he started from his bed, all his pulses beating with the strength of fear. What was he thinking of?—the great stakes he had played for and won? the big inaccessible fortune which made him this day, in this obscure house, as Uncle Edward said, one of the richest men in England? the wealthy inheritance, which was all his own? He thought of no such thing, poor madman, in his frightful success and triumph; far from that ruined soul and miserable house were now the delusions of love and fortune which had wiled himinto crime; no exultant thought of fortune gained—no lover’s fancy of Amelia won, warmed him in the first sharp access of misery. He thought of one thing, and one only, in the abject horror of that guilt, which he himself knew, though no one else did. The fatal box in which he had laid his train of destruction—the medicine chest where his father had gone to seek healing and had found death. Where was it? He saw it in his burning imagination a far more dread obstacle than had been that life which he had destroyed, standing between him and all the objects of his ambition; he could not look anywhere but that fatal vision glided before him, clear with its brass-bound corners, its tiny phials, and the lock which closed with such a horrible jar. It haunted his miserable eyes, a guilty spectrum—where was it?—had the doctor perhaps taken possession of if already to detect the secret felon, lurking murderous under its seeming innocence?—had the vindictive victim of that snare given it over into some one’s hand, a witness not to be intimidated against the parricide? The heavy drops rained from his white face, his limbstrembled like palsy, his very youth and strength forsook him in that dread emergency. By a dark intuition he knew that his father was dead, that all was over; that, so far as superficial appearances went, the fortune and the triumph were his own; and so got up—God help him!—in a fever of hopeless misery, to look for that fatal token which might, his excited fancy supposed, turn all the tide against him, and take his very life. He went out trembling and feeble, out of the shelter of his room—afraid of the daylight, of the stillness, of everything about and around him—trembling, like a felon as he was, at his own dreary and hideous success. This was how Horace Scarsdale came into his fortune, in faithful fulfilment of his grandfather’s wicked will!
ARMEDby the extremity of his alarm, Horace ventured, no one being near to spy upon him, to enter, in his miserable search, the chamber of death itself. He dared not look towards the bed, on which lay that rigid outline of humanity, all covered and dressed with white. He could scarcely contain the horror of his trembling as he stood, dismayed and powerless, in the presence of his victim; but, after his first pause of involuntary homage, he turned—though still not daring to turn his back to the bed, overpowered with a terror which he could not explain—to pursue his search. Stealthily moving about, with his head bent, and his step shuffling as if withage, he examined every corner, peering into the wardrobe, where his heart thrilled desperately to see the well-remembered garments which it was so hard to believe could never be worn again; and turning over familiar articles of daily use with awed and trembling fingers, as though they could betray him; but he could not find any trace of the object of his search. Its very absence seemed to him significant and terrible. Had some enemy taken it to testify against him? Had the dead man himself taken measures to secure his own revenge? Heavy, cold, clammy beads of moisture hung upon the young man’s face; a chill as of death entered into his heart; deep to the very centre of his being he himself knew and felt his own guilt—and now another mysterious, gnawing misery was added to his own self-consciousness. Some one else knew also; some one meaning him evil had withdrawn that dreadful instrument of death and vengeance. He had played his horrible game, but the great stakes were further off than ever. Already, in his miserable,excited imagination, he saw, instead of fortune and Amelia, a trial and a scaffold, and the dread name of parricide. A wild agony of impatience and intolerable suffering came over him. Rather than wait till this slow, deadly avenger of blood had found him out, he would rush forth somewhere, and denounce himself, and have it over. His punishment was more than he could bear!
But all was silent in the death-stricken house; not a sound, save the loud ticking of the clock downstairs, and the deep throbs of his own heart, could Horace hear as he stood, stealthy and desperate, at the door of his father’s room. Susan’s face, innocent and wondering; Uncle Edward’s benign countenance, disapproving and sad; and, still more dangerous, Peggy’s troubled eyes, watching where he went and what he did, haunted his imagination. He could fancy them all grouped together under covert somewhere, watching that guilty, stealthy pause of his—watching his secret, clandestine footsteps as he stole downstairs. But still he did go down, in thebreathless cowardice of his conscious crime; fearing everything, yet with all his mind fixed, in an intensity which was half insane, upon that dumb witness against him. He did not expect to find it. He could have supposed it possessed by some malicious spirit, and with an actual animate will working against him; but he could not rest till he had, through every corner, sought it out—if, perhaps, it could be found.
When he had got downstairs he paused again to consider where he should go; a faint sound of Peggy’s voice in the kitchen, and the slight stir made now and then for a moment by Colonel Sutherland in the dining parlour, confused and stopped him in his course. He stood for a moment irresolute and breathless, not seeing what to do, and then almost involuntarily opened the closed door of Mr. Scarsdale’s study. The recluse was dead, and could harm no man now; but he was alive when his guilty son stepped into that room so deeply instinct with his presence, where now more than ever he lived and had his sure abode. Almost more awful than theactual presence of the dead was that presence unseen and terrible, the invisible life of life, which death could not touch, and which should remain here for ever. Horace dared scarcely breathe the air of this deserted room. An hour’s imprisonment in it, in his present state of mind, would have driven him into mad superstition, if not to positive frenzy; but he saw something there, set out almost with ostentation on the table, which would have drawn him through fire and water. There it stood, solemnly by itself, the books and papers cleared away from its immediate vicinity, in malign and mischievous state, calling the attention of everyone who entered. Horace made his shuddering way forward, and seized upon it with the grasp of desperation. Yes, there it was, with all its evidence within his own reach, and safe, if he willed it so, to harm him no more!
The little medicine-chest was partially open, with the key in its lock; but this had been done of purpose, and was the result of no accident; and within lay something white—a sheet of paper—which assuredly wasnot there when he had opened it before. Almost too anxious to pay any attention to these elaborate marks of intention and design, Horace seized the box and the phial which he had filled. He could not pause even to look whether the leather which covered the cork had been removed, or any of the contents were gone, but hastened to the fireplace, where the ashes of a fire still lay in the grate, and with trembling hands broke the neck of the bottle against the grate, and emptied out its contents—for he dared not go outside, lest some one should see him. As he paused, kneeling on the hearth, breathless and with a beating heart, he tried to take comfort and re-assure himself. It was gone; no evidence existed now that the son had entered in, murderous and secret, to the father’s chamber. He tried to persuade himself that he breathed more freely; then he grovelled down upon the hearth, and hid his face in his hands. God help him! what did it matter though no one else suspected?—deep in the bottom of his heart did not heknow?—and was there anything in heaven or earth whichcould wash the horror of that certainty out of Horace Scarsdale’s miserable mind? He had been selfish, malicious, unloving before; but never till now had he been amurderer—and, oh! the horrible difference, the change unspeakable, which that dread distinction made!
However, he got up at last, all shuddering and weak, with the remains of the phial grasped in his hand, and with a morbid curiosity returned again to examine the box. This time he set it open and took out the sheet of paper. He could scarcely distinguish the words at first, for the awe of looking at his father’s writing, and receiving thus, as it were, a direct message from the dead; but when the sense slowly broke upon him the effect was like a stroke of magic. He stood staring at the paper, his eyes starting from his head, his face flushing and paling with wild vicissitudes of colour; then he dropped down heavily on the floor, thrusting aside unconsciously Mr. Scarsdale’s chair, which stood in its usual place by the table. He could neither cry nor help himself; he fellheavily, like a man stunned by a sudden blow—voice, strength, consciousness went out of him; he lay prostrate, with his head upon the fleecy lambskin where his father’s feet had been accustomed to rest, no longer a self-defending, self-torturing, conscious parricide, with a brand upon his soul worse than that of Cain; a figure blind and helpless, an insensible, inanimate mass of dull flesh and blood, conscious of nothing in the world, not even that he lived and was a man.
The paper fell fluttering after him and covered his face. It was of the kind and colour which Mr. Scarsdale always used—a blue flimsy leaf, and had been carefully cut to fit the box in which it was placed. What had tempted the recluse to record thus his suspicions and his precaution, no one in the world could now ever tell; save as the expression of a vindictive sentiment, and secret triumph to himself in his solitude for discovering and baffling a secret enemy, there was no meaning in it, and the chances are that nothing would have brought these words from the unhappy father’s pen could he have knownthe overpowering transport of relief which at sight of them should overthrow all the strength and make useless the defences of the still more unhappy son. On the paper were written in large letters, in Mr. Scarsdale’s distinctest handwriting, the following words—
“Tampered with by some person to me Unknown, and the contents of this chest left untouched by me since the 3rd May, on which day I have reason to believe this was done.”
This was the date of Horace’s fatal visit to Marchmain; and the solemn statement of the dead man relieving him from the actual guilt with which he believed himself accursed, had overpowered him with an emotion beyond words—beyond thought. Enough was left to sting him all his life long with black suggestions of ineffaceable remorse, but so far as act and deed went, he was not guilty. He could say nothing in his unspeakable relief. The desperate tension of his misery had kept him alive and conscious by very consequence of its sufferings—but when the bow was unstrung it yielded instantly. There he lay senseless where his father’s feet had used to rest,smitten to the heart with an undeserved and unutterable consolation—guilty, yet not guilty, by some strange interposition of God. He could not even be thankful in this overpowering, unbelievable relief from his misery; he could only fall fainting, unconscious, rapt beyond all sense and feeling. He was deeply, miserably guilty; too deeply stained ever to be clear of that remembrance in this life; but he was not a parricide. In spite of himself he was saved from that horror, and human hope might be possible to him still.