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.