While Manners had been in the act of telling his tale, the conflict which had taken place in the bosom of Lord Dewry can better be conceived than described. Every moment produced a change of sensation; every word a new and different apprehension. Now he fancied his son made acquainted with his guilt; now feared that the very means he had taken to conceal it might have made the gipsy to wreak his vengeance on his unoffending child. That Pharold was capable of committing any or every crime was a conviction which had been brought about in the mind of the peer by one of those curious processes in the human heart whereby great guilt seeks to conceal its blackness from even its own eyes, by representing others in colours as dark as it feels that it itself deserves; and while at one moment he suspected that Pharold might have obtained information of the trap laid for him by the gamekeeper, and to avenge himself might have revealed his whole history to Edward de Vaux, at another he believed that the destruction of his son might have been the means which the gipsies had determined upon, in order to punish himself for his designs against them.
As Colonel Manners concluded his account, however, the latter opinion predominated over all others; the peer's own heart acknowledged that the means they had taken was that which was the most fearfully effectual; and he beheld no other image than the heir of his name, the child of his love, murdered in cold blood, within sight of the very spot where his own hand had slain his brother. All his first emotions were consecrated to deep grief. He had loved his son; he had admired him; and affection and pride had united to give him the only green place in a heart that angry passions had left arid and desolate; and now he was alone in all the world. He had been hitherto like a mariner ploughing the waves in the midst of storms and darkness, with one small point of bright light in the wide dark vacancy before him; but now the clouds had rolled over that light for ever, and the past and the future were alike one lurid night. There was nothing left in life to live for; and during one moment all was despair: but the minute after, the most overpowering passion of human nature rose up, and rekindled with its own red and baleful light the extinguished torch of hope. Revenge became his thirst; and the remembrance that it was nearly within his grasp, and that another day would give it to him, was the only consolation that his mind could receive. It seized upon him at once; it compelled every other feeling and passion to its aid: grief gave it bitterness; pride gave it intensity; wrath lent it eagerness. "He has smitten me to the heart," he thought; "he has smitten me to the heart. But I will smite him still deeper, and he shall learn what it is to have raised his hand against a son of mine." It was but for one instant that he had given way to despair, and the next revenge took possession of his whole soul, and became almost more than a consolation--a joy. All its dark and cruel pictures, too, rose up before his mental vision, and he pleased himself with gazing forth into the future, and seeing him he most hated within the gripe of his vengeance. He painted to himself the agony which long and solitary imprisonment would inflict on a heart which he knew to be wild and free; he thought over all the tyrannical details of a trial in a court of justice; and he gazed even into the gipsy's bosom, and saw the burning indignation and despair that would wring his heart, exposed a public spectacle to the eyes of a race he detested, tried by laws he condemned and had abjured, and exciting the curiosity and the loud remark of the idle and the vulgar. He followed him in imagination to the scaffold, and saw him die the death of a dog; and only grieved that there revenge must stop, and that the cup contained not another drop of ignominy and suffering to pour upon the head of him who had destroyed his son.
Occupied with these thoughts, he remained silent for several minutes; but his features worked, and his limbs even writhed, wrought unconsciously by the intensity of the emotions within. Colonel Manners saw the strong and painful degree of his agitation; but he had no key to the secret sources of feeling which, opened wide by the news of his son's loss, were gushing forth in streams of bitterness upon his heart. He attributed, then, all that he saw to deep grief; and although his application to the peer, in his magisterial capacity, had been but to bring about the disclosures he had to make as gently as possible, yet he still thought it best to continue the same course with which he had begun, in order to engage the unhappy nobleman in those personal and active exertions which might in some degree divert his mind from the sole and painful contemplation of his recent loss.
"My lord," he said, feelingly, "believe me, no one feels more deeply and sympathizes more sincerely with your lordship than myself; but allow me to recall to your mind that great and instant exertions are necessary to ensure the arrest of the murderer; the pursuit of whom I have determined never to quit till I have seen him brought to justice."
Lord Dewry, with his own burning hand, clasped warmly that of Colonel Manners, the object of his former hatred. The fact is, however, that circumstances had established between them two strong ties since the death of Edward de Vaux. The one was wholly composed of good feelings, and sprang from their mutual affection for the deceased,--affection which had, of course, risen in value in each other's eyes since death had hallowed it; and the other,--composed of feelings which, though noble and virtuous on the one part, were terribly mixed with evil on the other,--was the desire of bringing the murderer to justice. Lord Dewry then grasped Colonel Manners's hand, and said, "I have much to thank you for, sir, and I am afraid that I have somewhat to apologize for in the past; but--"
"Do not mention it, I beg, my lord," replied Manners. "It is forgotten entirely; only let us bend our energies with a common effort to pursue this sad affair to an end, to discover, as far as Heaven shall enable us, what has really occurred, and above all, to ensure the immediate apprehension of this gipsy Pharold, whom every circumstance, hitherto apparent, points at as the murderer."
A gleam of triumph broke over the thin sallow countenance of the peer. "If I am not very much mistaken, Colonel Manners," he said, "this very Pharold will be in our hands to-night. He and his gang are not famous alone for one sort of crime. My park-keepers at Dimden informed me a few days ago that they had discovered a plan which these gipsies had laid for robbing my park of the deer; and I immediately took measures to ensure the arrest of the whole of them in the very fact. Nor was my purpose alone to save my game, Colonel Manners, nor to punish deer-stealers," continued Lord Dewry, raising his head and speaking with determined firmness; "no, I had a weightier object in view; I had a more serious offence to avenge."
The peer paused; for although he was anxious to make the charge which he had determined to bring against the gipsy, boldly and distinctly to as many private individuals as possible, before he urged it in a public court of justice, yet he felt a difficulty, a hesitation, perhaps we might say a fear, in pronouncing for the first time so false an accusation against a fellow-creature, which was to be supported, too, by so many dark, and tortuous, and deceitful contrivances. There was in his bosom a consciousness of the fallacy, of the futility, we might say, of all human calculations, which produced an undefined dread of rendering his schemes irretrievable by once making the charge to any one. It was to him the passing of the Rubicon; and that step once taken, he felt that he should be involved in a labyrinth of obscure and unknown paths, from which there would be no retreat, and which would conduct him whither he knew not. And yet he saw that it must be taken; that the gipsy's first act after his arrest would undoubtedly be, to charge him with the crime which he had committed; and that it was absolutely necessary, in order to give all his future proceedings a firm basis and a commanding position, to be the person to accuse rather than the person accused. He knew how inferior defence is to attack; how much more faith men are naturally inclined to give to a charge than they give to a recrimination; and from the first commencement of his reply to Colonel Manners he had determined to make it boldly; but when he came to the immediate point where it was to be spoken, he hesitated and paused irresolute.
The next moment, however, he went on. "Colonel Manners," he said, resuming his firmness, "as I believe that the culprit may be considered in our power, and that therefore no indiscreet communication of my suspicions can give him warning to escape, I do not scruple to say that I have many, many reasons to suppose that this gipsy, this Pharold, is not only the murderer of my son, poor Edward, but that my brother's death also may be laid to his charge; and with a view of bringing him to justice for that offence it was that I, this very morning, took the surest measures for his apprehension, and not for any pitiful affair of deer-stealing, which might have gone long unpunished ere I exerted myself as I have done."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Manners, gazing upon the peer in much surprise. "How strangely do events sometimes come round!"