CHAPTER XXVI
A BLIND ATONEMENT
Sir Stephen Berrington sat alone in the library at the Manor of Varenac.
Not that he was fond of his own company. Peste! He hated it. But there was no alternative just now.
Morry's sister had gone to Kérnak with that young fool Michael to keep her company, and Morry himself had not arrived.
Too bad that! If it had not been for Morry's over-persuasion he would never have left town.
He was none too fond of my Lord Denningham's company. The fellow was all right at the card-table, but otherwise he was a demned wet blanket.
Yes; a demned wet blanket!
Sir Stephen yawned, helped himself to another glass of punch from the bowl at his elbow, and continued to bewail his lot.
Where was Denningham? Wet blanket or no, even he would be better than no one in this old barn.
It was beginning to grow dusk, and Steenie was not fond of moping in the twilight.
Memory and he were ill friends.
Yet memory, unbidden, came and perched herself beside him.
A small fire of logs crackled on the hearth. Autumn winds were cold, and he was not so young as he used to be.
It is wonderful how old a fit of loneliness can make one.
At that moment the light-hearted Steenie Berrington of Carlton House was an old man.
The hand that carried the glass to trembling lips shook.
An old man!
It must be so since he had taken to looking back.
He had been young once.
Lost youth stood mocking him in the shadows. Laughter, love, hope, and strength,—all had been his.
A mother's hand seemed stretching out from the past years to smooth the fair hair from his forehead, whilst mother-eyes looked into his own laughing ones.
Those mother eyes! Had they ever looked anything but tenderly into his, though they had often been tear-dimmed in pain?
Pain he had inflicted carelessly enough, and, as carelessly, turned away.
Memory had bitter stabs for an old man sitting alone in the twilight.
Sir Stephen gulped down his punch and tried to hum a line of his favourite rhyme.
"Let's drink and be jolly, and drown melancholy;
So merrily, then, let us joy, too, and sing,
So fill up your bowls, all ye loyal——"
The song broke off, snapped by another of memory's shafts.
Where had he heard that song first?
At Dublin town.
Ah! Dublin held memories too.
A gay ballroom. A girl's sweet face. A kiss, passionate and long.
Norah, Norah—smiling, merry Norah.
He had loved her, too, for a short time—all too short for Norah.
And the boy?
Well! he had not been cut out for domesticity, and after a time Norah's tears bored him far more than Norah's smiles had ever charmed him.
Yet he had felt a pang of remorse when he heard she was dead. He might even have sought out his son had not the old man, his father, adopted him. It was better for Michael to be brought up at Berrington.
And, meantime, Steenie was finding that when one has a handsome face and jolly humour, it is easy to live by one's wits, even though honour be in the mire.
So the years rolled by. He watched them go as the wood spattered and burnt on the hearth, spurting out little jets of flame or leaping up the chimney in long, red tongues of fiery heat.
Michael, his son! His son. His father, it seemed at times, for here was Sir Henry over again, save for sudden fits of wild, rollicking devilry, which came of an Irish birthright, and delighted Sir Stephen hugely.
Mike and he might have been the jolliest of comrades were it not for the young fool's absurd ideas of honour.
Again Sir Stephen filled up his glass. He would at least drown melancholy and memory too.
After all, he hoped spoil-sport Mike would stay at Kérnak. The lad took life like an old man, and left his father behind in the merry ranks of youth.
Yes! of youth. He was not old—would not be old. He was young—merry. Laughter on his lips—in his heart, now the ghosts of the past were laid.
Confusion to memory! Con——
How darkly the shadows fell.
And behind him one was moving forward, nearer—nearer—nearer.
A stooping shadow, with a cap—blood-red in the dying light—on its head, and a face twisted and mocking.
But Sir Stephen was looking into the embers and seeing long years of laughter and song therein.
Oh, that stooping shadow! How stealthily it advanced.
Confusion to memory! Con——
An arm raised swiftly, and as swiftly descending.
Confusion——!
What followed? What followed?
A sudden, terrible pain, a suffocating sense of agony, a blinding rush of memories, of fear, of terror; and then a figure lurched forward, slipping sideways from the chair across the hearth, overturning a half-filled bowl of punch in its fall.
But Marcel Trouet stood cursing volubly in hot anger and dismay, for the features, upturned to his, were not those of Morice Conyers after all.
*****
The moments crept by leaden-footed. But Marcel Trouet stood still—very still—looking down at that white face, those stiffening lips.
He had killed the wrong man.
It was a matter of regret.
Hardened in crime though he was, murder in cold blood had never come his way before, and the horror of a useless deed held him there, actually trembling a little as he watched the slowly oozing blood trickle across the white hearth.
And the twilight was deepening in the silent room.
The hasty opening of a door startled the watcher into uttering a low cry of terror. But the terror passed at sight of Lord Denningham.
These two understood each other.
"Ah!"
"Unluckily I made a little mistake, mon ami. It was Morice Conyers—the citizen Varenac—I came to find."
"Aha! I understand. A little unfortunate for Steenie! Poor devil! But how go the affairs of State, friend Trouet?"
"It is I who should ask that. I hear that our good Moreece has become indeed a Marquis."
"One born out of time then, though it is true that Conyers was ready to play the fool. However, there is no reason to be anxious; I have already settled matters with him."
"You——?"
"He will not trouble us again any more than poor Steenie here."
Lord Denningham was smiling, but Marcel Trouet wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Bon, bon. You are a patriot, my friend."
"And now——?"
"Well, it will be clear sailing, as you call it in England. The men of Varenac did not see the dear Moreece?"
"Not a glimpse. They are waiting still."
"Excellent. Ah, ciel! what an idea! We shall have no trouble with these blockheads, who are sometimes difficult. You, my dear milord, will be Marquis, or—still better—the Citizen Varenac."
Jack Denningham stared for a moment. But he was not slow to catch the drift of the other's meaning.
"The Citizen Varenac?" he echoed. "A charming idea, Marcel, only a trifle difficult to practise."
"Difficult?"
"You forget I have been living here as Lord Denningham. The old curmudgeon, Pierre Koustak, would give me away. He is Royalist and Varenac to the backbone, and a gentleman of influence in these parts, if I mistake not."
Trouet shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, my friend, that is all easy enough. Where is this Pierre Koustak?"
"Below, no doubt, in the pantry, or poking his nose where it is not wanted."
"Let him come here. We will deal with him according to justice."
"Justice!"
"Eh bien! There is a man lying murdered in the library of the Manor of Varenac. We find him here, you and I. Who can be suspected but the only man in the house? It is without doubt the work of a villain. We will name that villain Pierre Koustak. You understand?"
"Perfectly. I will fetch him."
Pierre Koustak was not far away.
The last few days had made him anxious—very anxious. There were things happening he could not understand, and Monsieur le Marquis had not arrived at Varenac.
So he was ready enough to obey the summons to the library, even though he did not like the fair-haired milord with the blue eyes which were cold and hard as granite stones.
Yet perhaps he would hear something.
The worthy Pierre was not mistaken. He did hear something,—but not at all what he expected.
Murder! Ah! how terrible.
The sight of the huddled figure on the hearth made his knees tremble in very horror. But he knew nothing of it, had heard nothing. What did it mean?
In utter bewilderment, he stared from one grim-faced accuser to the other.
He murdered the Englishman who laughed and drank all day?
Mother of Heaven! such a thought, such a suggestion, was impossible, absurd.
But, where the prisoner is prejudged, argument is useless.
They refused to listen to the poor man's protestations, cries, and vows of innocency. Sir Stephen Berrington lay here, lately murdered; he, Pierre Koustak, was the only man in the Manor at the time, therefore Pierre must have done the deed.
That was the summing up. Afterwards Pierre, still pleading and imploring against such injustice, was bound, gagged, and carried to a little room at the back of the house.
"He will be safe there," observed Jack Denningham, with a grin, as he withdrew the key from the lock, placing it in his pocket. "And now for the comedy, Citizen Marcel, since tragedy is done with—for the present."
Marcel Trouet seemed thoroughly to appreciate the jest, for his sly face—a little paler perhaps than usual—was twisted into a satisfied grimace.
"You will wait here now, milord," he observed with a grand bow, "and I will bring your obedient and altogether adoring people to listen to the fatherly advice and counsel of the Citoyen Morice Varenac, ci-devant Marquis and aristocrat, but now the friend of liberty and the great and glorious Revolution."
He waved his red cap excitedly over his head as he spoke, laughing uproariously.
One is merry when one's plans succeed beyond—if contrary to—expectation. But it might have been observed that the Revolutionary leader took care to avoid re-entering the library where a dead man lay by a dying fire.