CHAPTER XVI
COLONEL SUTHERLAND and his young friend, who had by this time something to communicate which the discreet old soldier was perhaps not unprepared to hear, left Edinburgh that evening by the earliest train they could get which stopped anywhere near Armitage Park. The Colonel was most seriously in earnest, entirely occupied with the new position of affairs; while Roger, quickened by the change in his own personal circumstances, speculated a little on this new possibility of improving his fortune, and was exceedingly well content to dream of endowing Susan with something more than the old Grange, the empty and miserable condition of which came dolefully on his memory, now that he and his home were likely to have a lawful mistress. As they travelled, the Colonel exhausted himself in inquiries and suggestions as to what this hidden business could be, touching on every mode known to his innocence, by which an attorney could defraud a client, but of course never approaching within a thousand miles of the one method in which this attorney had succeeded in defrauding his; while Roger listened in a happy mist, half hearing – dwelling in his own mind on the plea he had already won, in the most arbitrary court in existence, and feeling the other plea important in consequence; but light, light and trivial, after all, a feather to his happiness. Thus they went on, very good companions, to Armitage, where Sir John received them with open arms; and in spite of all Colonel Sutherland’s resistance, kept them four-and-twenty hours without doing anything. This delay postponed the execution of their business for a longer space than twenty-four hours, and produced other results not less important; for it left Horace time, in his restless wretchedness, to set out once more to Harliflax.
If Horace Scarsdale had encountered his uncle there, the chances are that he would have found very little difficulty in betraying his “friend” and principal. The young man had miscalculated the magnitude of those affairs in which he had embroiled himself. He knew well enough that there was nothing soft or sentimental, and not very much of human impressionable stuff in his own nature, but he did not know that a mind inaccessible to compassion or sympathy may still be desperately alive to all the selfish horrors of remorse and guilt, and that not even the promised income of a thousand a-year which he had forced from Mr. Pouncet’s fears and hopes, or the expectation which he entertained of being able to persuade Amelia Stenhouse into an immediate marriage, could make him insensible to that dread horror of suspense in which he lived. There were no letters, no newspaper paragraphs, or country intimation of a sudden death – darkness and silence immovable had dropped like a veil over all that district which enclosed Marchmain. Every day and every night Horace could see that wild stretch of moorland brooding under its dismal sky; and there was scarcely a moment, sleeping or waking, in which his guilty imagination ceased to dwell in his father’s lonely house. Had he met Colonel Sutherland in this miserable crisis of his affairs, the chances are that Horace would gladly have given a sop to his fevered conscience by telling all he knew of Mr. Pouncet’s fraud. As it was, possessed with a restlessness which he could not subdue, he returned to Harliflax, the only other place in the world where he could find even a temporary interest – resisting, with all the strength he still could muster, the dread curiosity which drew him to Marchmain.
Mr. Pouncet accordingly was alone when Sir John Armitage, the Colonel, and Roger made an unexpected descent upon him. There was nothing to frighten a good dissembler in the entire three of them, honest sincere souls each in their way, who came here with suspicion, it is true, yet had a natural habit of believing what was said to them. Mr. Pouncet played his part very well. Knowing that his letter itself was out of their power, and could not be brought against him, he made his defence lightly. A lady’s mistake, a thing most easily explained: – he had indeed written to his friend Stenhouse about some private matters of business, and his wife had made a woman’s blunder about it, knowing nothing of business, and supposing, of course, that there could be no Musgrave in the world but her son. Of course Sir John might be perfectly assured that he should take every possible step to ascertain anything affecting Mr. Musgrave’s interests – indeed, was not the late Mr. Musgrave his client? And now especially, when his own honour was involved, his exertions should be redoubled; he had already sent his confidential clerk —
Here Colonel Sutherland interrupted the fluent speaker: “Did the confidential clerk, whom you sent to make inquiries, happen to be my nephew, Horace Scarsdale?” asked the old soldier.
“Your nephew!” Mr. Pouncet stood dismayed. “The young man’s name was certainly Scarsdale,” he said, after a little puzzled pause.
“Then I have no doubt that accounts for the failure of the investigation,” said the Colonel, who had been bending his deaf ear to the wily attorney with an earnest attention, strangely out of keeping with the insincere and untrustworthy voice to which he listened. “Much grief as it gives me to say so, Armitage, I am afraid Horace would hinder rather than help. I don’t know how he has mixed himself up with such an affair,” said Uncle Edward, musing; “but he certainly has to do with it somehow. He’s – alas! very clever, this nephew of mine; unhappily brought up, poor fellow! fond of intrigue, I fear, one kind or another. Mr. Pouncet, I’d recommend you to employ another man.”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Mr. Pouncet, chuckling to himself; “of course, I yield any little knowledge I may have of young Scarsdale to the superior information of a relative – ha, ha! Your candid judgment does you credit, I am sure, Colonel. Mr. Scarsdale is not here to-day, I am sorry to say; very unsettled lately he has appeared to me. Ah, come in, Edwards! I’ve some instructions to give you before these gentlemen. We will lose no time, Sir John, and you shall hear my directions with your own ears.”
“That’ll do, Pouncet” said Sir John, with a slight air of disgust. “My own opinion is, you’re a deal too easy in your talk to mean anything. Hope you don’t know any more about it than you choose to tell us, which appears to me, begging your pardon, a long way more likely than not; for who’s to cheat a man if it isn’t his own attorney? Send your clerk if you like, I’ll have nothing to do with it. If one wants a thing well done, one must do it oneself. Come along, Sutherland; no, I’m not satisfied, and I don’t pretend to be.”
Saying which, in spite of Mr. Pouncet’s strenuous endeavours to explain, and to set himself right with his wealthy client, Sir John fought his way out, dragging along with him his young and his old friend. The Colonel looked very grave and rather sad, wondering what “motive” Horace could have for helping to injure Roger. Meanwhile, that young hero himself took, it is to be confessed, more amusement than anything else from the entire matter. His hopes were so slight that they did not at all excite him, whereas he could not but perceive that Sir John’s little burst of ill-humour, and Mr. Pouncet’s discomfiture thereat, was tolerably good fun. They went to the inn to have lunch, all three displaying their various humours – of which Sir John’s was the most demonstrative and plain-spoken.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the baronet; “Pouncet’s a deal too well up in his defence. I never like a man who knows just exactly what to say for himself when he’s accused of a sudden – ten chances to one, look you, Roger, that he’s guilty; for if he’s guilty, of course he knew every word you were going to say – whereas if he’s innocent, he’s taken by surprise and shows it. That’s my opinion; and, by Jove, if the rascal took in Musgrave, I’ll bet you something he’s taken in me as well. But you may rely upon it I’ll have the whole affair looked into now.”
“Eh?” said Colonel Sutherland, stooping over the chair into which Sir John had thrown himself, with his hand curved over his ear; “have the whole affair looked into now? Well, Armitage, if I have less concern in it one way than you, I have more another. There’s still a week before my Ned comes home, I’ll see what I can do with my own eyes and spectacles. I’m an old campaigner: twenty miles a day over a pleasant country is no extraordinary work for an old soldier like me.”
“And I, Colonel – what am I to say to you for such painstaking kindness?” said Roger, forgetting his amusement in hearty gratitude and admiration.
“My dear boy, it’s a great deal for your sake, but something for the sake of my sister’s son,” said the Colonel, with a smile and a sigh – “and only till my boy’s holidays begin; but as for you, go on to whatever is the name of the place and see your mother, and the pretty sisters and the little boy, and if there’s anything to be heard of Horace there, send me word; and don’t forget if you do meet with him that he is, in spite of everything – ”
“Susan’s brother! – there is not a chance that I shall forget,” said Roger, brightly.
Meanwhile Sir John, catching the sound of one word, which tickled the ear of his possessing demon, muttered to himself, “Pretty sisters!” Then added aloud, “Going to see your mother, Roger? Possibly she’s got something further to tell us – I’ll go too.”
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN Horace 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-eyed Medusa, 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 had almost 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, but had 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 fierce and 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. He had 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 and suffering. 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, thrusting aside 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 you don’t see a great difference in him?” cried the poor woman, with a flutter at her heart. She could take 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 by a 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, humour him – 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, from he 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, generous intentions. 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. What was 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?