To this recital, which occupied above an hour, Sim appeared to pay full heed, but in reality his thoughts were far away. He nodded from time to time, uttered an ejaculation or expression of wonder or regret, and suggested that he was devoting his whole mind to his friend’s sensational story, but in truth the man’s thought was otherwise engaged. Desperation and malice and hate were the furies that now drove him forward. While he lent his ear to Daniel, his brains were full of seething wrath, and he plotted how best to use that night, how best to ruin for ever this being who had returned thus inopportunely from the grave. He shook in secret, his rage nearly choked him unseen; and at last caution was thrown to the winds, craft was forgotten, passion whirled Sim out of himself, he played his part no more, and as Daniel to his friend had proclaimed the living truth behind the black veil that hid it, so now Titus also revealed himself, spoke in a frenzy of disappointed passion, and stripped his heart to the other’s horrified gaze. Even in the full tempest and springtime of his fury, Sim perceived that he held the upper hand, and made that clear to Sweetland. The truth, indeed, he told, but without a witness, and it was beyond the listener’s power to prove anything. He might repeat Sim’s infamous confession, but there were none to substantiate the story. Only one man could have done so, and he lay waiting for his funeral on the morrow.
“I’ve heard you, now hear me,” said the footman. “The Devil’s kept you for the rope, Dan Sweetland; and ’twas I wove the rope and shall live to know you’ve worn it. Your friend once, your bitter enemy to the death from the day that woman put you before me and chose you for her husband. After that I cursed your shadow when you passed and only waited the right moment to get you out of my road for evermore. In the nick of time the chance fell, and I—that you trusted as a pig trusts the butcher—I caught you like a rabbit in a snare. Glare at me! Stare your damned black eyes out of your head! I did it—did it all! And I’ve not done with you yet—remember that. Rix Parkinson’s a dead man now—gone to have it out in hell with Adam Thorpe. ’Twas Rix that shot him, and ’twas I that thrashed your father the same night. We worked very well together—Rix and me. Look out of the window. Only a six-foot drop—you’ll have the same drop presently—with a rope round your neck. Down that wall I’ve gone a hundred times. Rix drank damnation with his money; I put my share away and let it grow. You was the black sheep in everybody’s mouth. I—that was twice and twenty times the skilled sportsman you was—I went my way quiet and unsuspected. Many and many and many’s the night me and Parkinson thinned the pheasants. Then came that hour when your old fool of a father and Adam Thorpe blundered on us. The best men will make a mistake now and again; yet after all’s said, the mistake was theirs, for one lost his life and t’other got his grey head broken. And then ’twas, after we’d gathered our birds again and gone, that the thought of what might be came to me. ‘Sweetland’s the man for this dirty work,’ says the Devil to me; and in an hour, when Rix was away with the birds, I went up over to your new home and found you at hand. You almost walked on top of me as you went away; then I slipped into the hovel by unlatching a back window with a bit of wire, and there was your gun waiting for me, with cartridges in it as had just been fired! I saw you hanging in Exeter gaol from that moment, if Thorpe died. The rest you know. I hid the gun that night afore the hue and cry, and, come morning, found it put away very carefully where ’twas supposed you meant to come for it some other day. Meantime Thorpe died in hospital. ’Twas all as easy as lying. And now you stand where you stood the hour that you were arrested. You’re a doomed man, for only I can prove your innocence, and that I never will. That’s what it is to come between a man and a woman he loves. If I don’t have her, nobody shall have her—least of all you.”
The other rose and gasped in amazement at this narrative.
“Be it Sim I hear, or some cold-blooded Dowl as have got into his shape?”
“You know well enough, ruin seize you! Wrecked my life—that’s what you’ve done; but the last word’s mine. I haven’t worked and toiled by night and day for this. I’ll have her yet. Why not? You’re dead already! Go—get out of my sight—sleep your last easy sleep. Go, I say, or I’ll do for you with my own hand! ’Tis time you were in hell. An’ there I’ll follow you; but not yet—not yet. Many a long year’s start of me you’ll have. I must marry and get children; and if I live long enough, I’ll cheat the Devil yet; but you—your thread’s spun; dead and buried in quicklime you shall be!”
Nothing could have exceeded the frantic passion with which Sim uttered this whirl of words. They burst from him with explosions and nearly choked him. His eyes blazed, his limbs worked spasmodically. For the time he behaved like a malignant lunatic.
Sweetland perceived that little was to be gained by further speech with one insane. Therefore he rose and went away, that Titus might have time to reflect and recover his senses. How much of this confession to believe, Daniel did not know. At first, though dazed by such dreadful tidings, he had credited the story and set it down to love run mad; but when real madness blazed on Sim’s white face and he ceased to be coherent—when the baffled rascal, in his storm and hurricane of disappointment, raved of death and hell, Dan began to suppose him insane in earnest. The wish was father to the thought. Even in his bewilderment and consternation at this result of his confession to his friend, there came sorrow for Titus Sim, and grief that such an awful catastrophe had overtaken him. He longed to believe the whole dreadful story was spun of moonshine; but he could not. There was too much method in it. Sim had been responsible for all, and still too clearly desired his destruction.
For a few moments Sweetland stood irresolute at the door of the footman’s room. Then he crept back to his own. No sign of day had yet dawned. As he stood in profound thought, a clock below struck two.
At last the determination to see his master overcame Daniel. The gravity of his position was such that he did not hesitate. In a few moments he knocked at Henry Vivian’s door and was admitted.
The young man had now reached convalescence, but still kept his room. A fire was burning, and Vivian rose and lighted a lamp.