Chapter Fourteen.
“Our life is but a chain of many deaths.”
Young.
For a few days things went on to all outward intents as if the letter which Marmaduke destroyed had never existed. Once or twice he had a feeling as if it were indeed nothing more than a dream through which he had passed, for the act struck himself as so unlike his usual languid easy-going nature, that even to him there was an unreality mingled with it, and he was inclined at all events to compassionate himself for the crisis which had forced anything so repugnant upon him. On the sixth day there arrived a telegram announcing Mr Tregennas’s death.
Mr Miles, Anthony, and Marmaduke started at once. A sort of restraint had grown up between the two young men, which was, perhaps, although it began only by reflection, more perceptible in Anthony’s manner than in that of Marmaduke, for the former was at all times quickly conscious of the feelings of others towards himself, and apt to throw them back. He was sensitive, moreover, to external influences; there was heavy rain falling, a damp chill in the air, and, as they drove down the road towards Trenance through woods in which the wild garlic was beginning to scent the air, the mournfully heavy drip of the rain through scantily clothed trees, the coarse sodden grass, the dreary moss-grown little paths that led away as it seemed into some dismal wilderness, the house with its shut and blinded windows lying under a pall of low clouds, deepened the disturbed expression of his face. No one spoke after they left the station. The carriage that had been sent for them, with its old moth-eaten cushions, rolled slowly along, the coachman not thinking very kindly of his load: a probable heir can scarcely expect a welcome from old servants who have grown fat and masterful under the weakened hands of age. The place had always seemed oppressed with a weight of silence, but now, as they drove up, the very wheels jarred upon the excessive stillness, broken only by the ceaseless dripping of the rain. Nevertheless, Marmaduke’s spirits rose as soon as he found himself in the house; and while Anthony, with a pale and troubled face, flung himself down in the dreary drawing-room, which looked uglier and more uninviting than ever, he went about from room to room, only avoiding that which an awful Presence guarded. It was Mr Miles who went there first, and when he came down again he held a little miniature in his hand.
“It was found under his pillow,” he said. “There is Margaret Hare, as she must have been in the old days before the unhappy quarrel. It makes me hope that he may, after all, have remembered her child.”
“I shall go up to him,” said Anthony, starting up. He had a shrinking from the sight of death and all painful things, but at this moment he could only remember the old man who had been kind to him after his fashion. “Marmaduke, will you come?”
“No,” said Marmaduke carelessly, “it can do no good now. You can tell me if anything has to be arranged, and I will see about it.”
He spoke with an easy assumption of authority, which stirred Anthony’s anger. All that Marmaduke said or did seemed to jar upon him, upon the time, the quiet, the sadness; for, after all, although there is not so much to stir our sympathy, perhaps no death can be so sad as that of a forlorn and unlovely old age.
There were no relations to come to the house; all the orders were given by Mr Pitt, Mr Tregennas’s lawyer, a little withered red-faced man with shrewd eyes, who was there when they arrived, and who kept himself in the library, away from them all, until the day of the funeral. Perhaps a more silent four could hardly have been found than the men who were gathered in the old damp house, although with Marmaduke the silence was rather compulsion than choice. Anthony was very grave and subdued. When the funeral came they were all together almost for the first time, rumbling along the desolate overgrown road, with two or three empty carriages crawling behind them, which had been sent by the neighbours with a vague belief that it was an easy method of doing honour to the dead. The rain was falling still as they all rumbled back again, and gathered in the library to hear Mr Pitt read the will. It was soon done. A few annuities were bequeathed to the old servants, five thousand pounds free of legacy duty to his great-nephew, Marmaduke Lee, and the remainder, half in entail and half unreservedly, to the great-nephew of his second wife, Anthony Miles. William Miles, clerk, was appointed executor.
Mr Pitt’s monotonous reading was interrupted by Marmaduke Lee, with a white, quivering face,—
“I protest against such a will as a fraud. I can prove it to be a fraud,” he cried, lifting his hand and letting it fall tremulously on the table.
Anthony neither turned towards him nor moved. Mr Miles said, a little hurriedly,—
“When Mr Pitt has finished, my son has something to say.”
The lawyer, looking quietly from one to the other, took up his sing-song again, and went on as if there had been no break. Marmaduke had shrunk into his chair like a man who had received a heavy blow, his very passion was too weak to support him at this crisis, he scarcely heard the formal words running on in set rounded phrases: what he did hear at last was Mr Miles asking,—
“Is there no mention whatever of Miss Harford in the will?”
“There is nothing more than you have heard me read,” said Mr Pitt, in his dry voice.
The name seemed to recall Marmaduke’s senses, and a rush of rage stimulated him to burst out again,—
“It is false, and a lie! Anthony has taken advantage of his dotage. I will dispute every word of it.”
Anthony looked at him with a contemptuous darkness in his face, which it was not pleasant to see, but he held his voice under repression as he bent forward, folding his arms on the table, and saying slowly,—
“Dr Evans is the person to testify whether or not Mr Tregennas was in the full possession of his senses. It was only a fortnight before his death that I received a hint of his intentions, which were as unwelcome to me as to Lee. I had fixed this very day for coming here to urge my objections. No one could have thought it would all have ended so soon,” said the young fellow, with his lips quivering. “All that I can do is to make over to Lee that part of the property which is at my own disposal,—not because of his words, but because he has a better right to it than I.”
Sometimes people get small thanks for large acts of generosity, and in this case it is possible that Marmaduke was too stupefied or too sullen for gratitude, Mr Pitt might have said something, but he only glanced at Anthony with his shrewd eyes, and gathered and tied up his packets silently. There was a chill about the whole business which struck keenly on Anthony, who liked to be generous, but who also liked acknowledgments, warm words, and hearty looks: he got up quickly and went out of the room, leaving his father to settle what remained.
As for Marmaduke, it was not easy for his mind at that moment to grasp the fact that things were not so crushing as he had dreaded. What might have seemed much to him at another time now seemed nothing, and he hated Anthony so much that his gift was an intolerable load. Was it for this that he had done the wrong? For, after all, however cunningly a man may disguise his sin beforehand, the disguise is but a poor helpless thing that falls off when it has served the Devil’s turn, and leaves what it covered hideous. It was only before he opened the letter that he had tried to deceive himself with dreams of fairness to Anthony. Ever since it had been scourging him. And now a fierce rage was uppermost.
He went back to Thorpe the next morning alone, Mr Miles and his son finding it necessary to remain and set matters in train, and before he went he forced himself to say some ungracious words to Anthony about his gift. Perhaps it would have been better had he gone away in silence, for the words were not likely to do much towards healing the breach: they were said, however, and the Vicar and Anthony stood at the door and watched the carriage toiling away up the drive. The sky was a soft dazzle of blue, everything was shooting and sprouting after the rain, colours seemed full of light, there were young creatures leaping and running, a spring glory brightening the ugly old house.
“It is almost a pity that it should be let,” said Mr Miles, standing on the steps with his hands behind him.
“I could not live here,” Anthony answered, shrugging his shoulders.
There was a little silence. The Vicar was looking after the carriage, and not really thinking much about the house. He said at last, slowly,—
“I don’t much like the spirit he has shown.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Anthony, without much cordiality. “I don’t suppose he can do me any particular harm.”
“Harm!” repeated Mr Miles, startled. Then, as his son did not reply, he said, sighing, “I am thinking of poor Marion.”
“She can be married now as soon as she likes, I suppose,” said Anthony shortly, turning away and going into the house. He was not feeling much of that sweet sense of satisfaction which is held up to us as bringing a quick reward for our good actions: he had behaved more generously towards his cousin than ninety-nine men out of a hundred might have done, but his generosity did not tend to make him ignorant of this fact, and he had expected a certain reward which had not come. Mr Pitt’s manner had chilled him as much as Marmaduke’s. He would have resented the imputation that he was dependent upon external influences, yet there was a certain side of his character which seemed almost at their mercy, and a fortress is no stronger than its weakest point. If he made over the fortune to Marmaduke as an act of justice, it is certain that his mode of receiving it should have made no difference in Anthony’s determination; nevertheless, at this moment he half repented, and perhaps would have undone it if he could.
Mr Miles stood where his son had left him, looking sadly up the road along which Marmaduke had but now driven. Something, which was so indefinable that only a woman might have noticed it, seemed to have changed his face and his whole bearing ever since the day in which he had spoken to Marion in his study: the shadow of a shade had now and then, as it were, just touched him and passed, but during the last few days it had rested longer. He was conscious of it himself, yet it was so little beyond a vague something that he was inclined to smile at his own fancifulness. Rousing himself at last, although with another sigh, he went slowly down the steps and round to the front of the house, instead of going into the library, where there were papers and accounts to be looked over. Anthony was right. Marion might marry if she pleased, now that there was enough money to make things easy to them. And yet with the thought the shadow deepened.
For two days, however, he said nothing. But one evening when Anthony, who had cast off some of his vexation, was planning changes in the estate before it passed into the hands of tenants, his father remarked slowly,—
“I think I shall go home to-morrow. Something ails me, and I don’t know what it is. Perhaps your mother will find out.”
“Do you mean that you feel ill?” Anthony asked, looking up hastily.
“No, I don’t mean anything of the sort I have no more to say about it than just what I have said, so you need not alarm yourself. But I shall go, and you can either remain behind or run down again next week.”
“My mother will set you to rights, sir,” said Anthony cheerfully.
“Yes. And Marion. And Marion,” repeated the Vicar with a little absence of manner.
“I’ll go back with you, and come down again, as you suggest,” his son went on. “I should like to put two or three things straight before the place is let. There must be a clean sweep of a good deal.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr Miles, half impatient, half smiling, “your young man’s idea of a reformer is a Briareus with a broom in each hand. It’s lucky we don’t all get treated in that fashion. Well, let me see your plans.”
Father and son went home the next day, as the Vicar desired, and the shadow passed,—or so it seemed. It might have been Mrs Miles’s little doctorings, or the return to the old routine of habit, which had grown into a second self; at any rate, the Vicar was apparently as well as he had been during the long years of his residence at Thorpe Regis, nor was there anything to distract his wife’s interest from Marion’s wedding when that took place a little later. No one could give any reason for delay strong enough to weigh down the girl’s impetuous demand; that her father and Anthony felt a vague uneasiness was not sufficient to do more than perhaps excite her to a determined attitude of defiance. To outward eyes there was everything that a wedding should have, youth and love, sunshine, roses in the old garden, smiles, brightness. Yet it was not all smooth. Marmaduke was restless, and his easy temper every now and then broke down in fits of irritation, while there was a visible restraint between himself and Anthony. Mr Miles was grave and sad throughout the day. After it was over, and Anthony had walked up to Hardlands to dinner, taking with him the few Vicarage guests, his father stood in the drawing-room in a manner altogether unlike himself, and looked wistfully at his wife.
“We have been happy together, Hannah,” he said slowly.
Mrs Miles’s eyes filled with tears at this sudden appeal.
“Very happy, William.”
“You have been a good wife,—it would be better perhaps if poor Marion were more like you. Somehow, I don’t feel so sure about things now,—I forget—”
“Forget? I am always forgetting,” said Mrs Miles consolingly. “I am sure you don’t lose your spectacles half so often as I do, and where they are now is more than I can really say. But it has all gone off as well as possible.”
“I wish I knew Marmaduke better.”
“My dear, when you have seen him since he was no higher than the table!”
“Poor Marion! Poor child!”
“She is quite happy,” said the mother, nodding her head sagaciously. “I only warned her to take care that he has plenty of beef-tea, for he is sadly thin.”
The door was pushed open, and Sniff came running in, looking for Marion. Somebody had tied a white favour round his neck, of which nothing was left but a little ragged strip of ribbon. He had followed Anthony to Hardlands, and not finding Marion there or here, flung himself exhausted at Mr Miles’s feet, with a piteous look of entreaty in his faithful eyes. The Vicar stooped and patted him.
“Is she gone, poor fellow—” he said.
What stopped the words?—What spring of life suddenly failed?—Was it the shadow, after all, no longer shadowy, but a presence, a reality? Mrs Miles, running to him with a cry, caught him in her faithful arms, and held him by an almost supernatural strength from falling forward on his face.
“William, William!”
The servants in the kitchen heard the cry though he did not, and flocked in, Anthony was sent for, another messenger despatched to Underham for the doctor. All the doctors in the world could do him no good, but Mrs Miles would not believe it as she sat by the bed where he was lying.
“He was so well, Anthony, all the morning. And I think Marion’s wedding made him remember our own, for do you know what he said just before? ‘We have been very happy together, Hannah,’ he said. I must tell him when he is better that I did not say half enough.”
I think the words have been told by this time like so many other of those unspoken words which wait for our utterance, but he did not hear them then. No more sounds apparently reached his ear where he lay silent and motionless while the days passed slowly by, carrying his moments with them, until the last came, when they scarcely expected it, as quiet and gentle as his life had been throughout.