“Hallo! So Fordham has been here?” cried Phil. “Hang it, I never authorised the old chap to break the news. I suppose, though, he thought you knew it already, and came to congratulate you. Still—it’s odd—deuced odd. It isn’t like him, anyhow.”
“He left this for you,” holding forth the bulky missive. “Philip, take it to your own room, where you will be quite alone, lock the door, and read it through from beginning to end. Oh, God! It is horrible—horrible?”
“Horrible! Fordham!” echoed Philip, in blank amazement. “Father, I don’t understand. Tell me in a word—what’s it all about? Why make me wade through twenty pages of Fordham’s rigmarole when half-a-dozen words will do it?”
“Oh, I can’t—I can’t!” moaned poor Sir Francis. “Read it, Phil—read it! That will tell you.” And with almost frantic gesture he waved his son from the room.
Philip’s heart beat strangely as he went to seek the privacy enjoined. What on earth had Fordham to communicate that concerned himself—that availed to throw his father into so pitiable a state of agitation? Under ordinary circumstances he would have suspected the package, so elaborately sealed and directed to himself, to contain a string of stale and would-be cynical platitudes on the situation, for which he felt in no sort of mood just then. Now a strange eerie foreboding of evil was upon him.
He gained his room, which was fireless, and cold and uncheery of aspect. Then, by the light of the solitary candle, he broke the seals and drew forth the contents of the envelope. These would keep him busy for some time in all conscience, he decided, noticing how closely written were the numerous sheets. But almost with the first glance, as he began to read, a start and a wild ejaculation escaped him. Then, as he read on, a deathly paleness spread over his countenance, and his hand clenched convulsively upon the rail of his chair. His attitude became rigid and his features hardened. His eyes dilated with a stare of intense horror and surprise as they travelled down each successive sheet of the fateful paper.
Where is the sunny, light-hearted youth, rejoicing in the strength of health and happiness and love, who entered this house such a short while ago? Not surely to be found in this being, whose ashy features are stamped with the set, grey look of a stricken despair; the frozen horror in whose eyes, as they seek alternately the shadowed objects around the half-darkened room and the rigidly grasped paper, is that of a man who suddenly realises that he has all involuntarily committed some appalling crime.
His dry lips move half unconsciously, and in husky, laboured gasps, frame the well-nigh inarticulate words—
“O God! such a hideous thing could never be! God in Heaven, it can’t be true! It can’t be true!”