Such were some of the motives, or, rather, such were some of the facts, which had influenced Lord Dewry in all his actions for the last twenty years. For a time, indeed, he had affected gayety which he did not feel, and mingled in society which had lost all charm for him; but the revellings of the never-dying worm upon his heart's inmost core would make themselves felt, and gradually he drew back from the world, gave himself up to solitude and stately reclusion, forgot what it was to smile, and only mingled with his fellow-men to pour forth upon them the gall and bitterness that welled from an everlasting source in his own bosom.
Remorse, however, was not the only fiend that preyed upon his heart: fear, too, had its share. We have said, and said truly, that he was corporeally as brave a man as ever lived: he knew not what bodily fear is; but that is a very, very different affection of the complicated being, man, from the mental terrors, the daily doubts, the hourly apprehensions, that crowded upon him in solitude and retirement. Corporal pain, the simple act of dying, he feared not, and there yet lingered in his mind some faint traces of his early faith, suggesting vague ideas of atonement made for man's crimes, which led him to believe that the anguish which he suffered below might be received in place of repentance, and procure him pardon hereafter; so that, on ordinary occasions, he felt no tangible dread even of the awful separation of soul and body. But this was not all: the torturing uncertainty of his fate was a bitter portion of his curse. He knew that there were two men in the world who could, at any time, doom him to disgrace and death; or at least, if, by the precautions he had taken, their success in any attempt of the kind had been rendered doubtful, yet their knowledge of the dreadful secret of his state rendered all that he possessed--honour, fortune, rank, even existence itself--precarious; and he felt, as he looked around him, that he was living in a gilded dream, which the next moment might vanish, and leave him to misery and despair.
At first, when, perhaps, it might have been in his power to implicate the gipsy as the murderer of his brother, and, by pursuing him as such, to have crushed one strong source of evidence against himself, two powerful causes had operated to deter him from such a course. He knew that Sir William Ryder, though implicated by accidental circumstances in his crime, was of too generous a nature to connive at any further evil to which the desire of concealing it might lead him. But it would be doing him injustice not to say that he himself had shrunk from the very thought. His heart was not hardened enough for that: he felt that there was too much blood upon his hand already; and although the idea did cross his mind, yet at that time remorse was stronger than fear, and even had Sir William Ryder not existed, he would have chosen rather to bear apprehension than a greater load of regret.
Time, however, had now altered such feelings; he was accustomed to remorse, but no time can harden the heart to fear; and the first imagination which crossed his mind, when, at the end of twenty years, he again saw the gipsy, was to destroy him. The reader may recollect a conversation in the beginning of this work, wherein Pharold detailed the particulars of an interview he had had with the peer; and it may easily be conceived, that from that interview Lord Dewry perceived at once that the moment was come when he must try his strength with those who had the power to injure him, and silence them for ever, or yield for ever to his fate; and with a strong determination, but a mind fearfully agitated, he instantly resolved to crush those he feared, if human ingenuity, backed by wealth, and power, and a daring disposition, could accomplish such an object.
Such had been the state of his mind when he so unexpectedly visited the house of Mrs. Falkland, and found new cause for apprehension in the conversation of Colonel Manners. But his coming thither had not for its sole object to meet and welcome his newly-returned son. He had learned, by instant and close inquiry after the gipsy had left him, that parties of his race had been seen lying in the neighbourhood of Morley Wood, with the view, it was supposed, of poaching on the open and ill-protected grounds in that district; and suspecting, from his conversation with Pharold, that on the refusal he had given, Sir William Ryder himself might return to England, he hastened over to his sister's house, which lay within a few miles of his property of Dimden, in order, if possible, to pursue means of destroying the actual witness of his crime, before the arrival of the only other person who even suspected it.
Let it not be supposed--although there were in reality no means at which Lord Dewry would now have hesitated to effect his purpose--that he deliberately, and boldly, and undisguisedly proposed to his own heart to bring about the gipsy's death. No, no: the great power of evil is too well aware how horrible his naked suggestions are, not to furnish them with a veil, flimsy enough, it is true, but still sufficient to cover some part of their deformity. No! Lord Dewry only proposed--at least, he cheated himself into thinking so--to detect the gipsy or his comrades in some unlawful exploit, which might give an excuse for removing them for ever from the country, and at the same time might render any evidence they might tender against himself, not only suspicious, but almost inadmissible.
The severe laws in regard to poaching, and the loose and lawless habits of the gipsies themselves, he doubted not would furnish the means; and his great object was to discover an offence of such magnitude, and to obtain proofs so clear, that great severity would be warranted and the justice of the accusation undeniable. It might cross his mind that, in the pursuit of these views, a gipsy or a keeper might be killed, that the charge of murder might be added to that of poaching, and that a felony might rid him of the enemy of his repose for ever. Such a thing might cross his mind, and be viewed with no great dissatisfaction; but, at the same time, he denied to himself that such was his object. "No: God forbid! But, if it did happen, he should of course take advantage of it to silence for ever the voice of one who had been witness to the unfortunate accident by which, in a moment of hasty passion, his brother had been deprived of life, and who seemed disposed to abuse the knowledge he unhappily possessed."
Such had been the thoughts of Lord Dewry as he travelled over to Mrs. Falkland's house on the night of his son's arrival, and such were the thoughts that again took possession of him as soon as the passion in which he had left her subsided on the following morning.
"With Sir William Ryder," he thought, as the carriage rolled rapidly on towards Dimden--"with Sir William Ryder I shall easily be able to deal single-handed, if once I can remove his confederate. He used to be a simple, frank-hearted, foolish fellow; but I must, by some means, keep him from any further meeting with Edward. I have already remarked that the boy sees there is some mystery; and a bare hint would awaken suspicions that I would rather die than he should even dream of. But this man--this Pharold--must be my first care; and my next must be to procure such proofs of my having been in London at the time of my brother's death that suspicion itself shall be silenced, if either of the villains dare to open his lips."
The manner in which this latter object was to be accomplished became the next consideration; but ere Lord Dewry could come to any determination upon the subject, the lodge of Dimden Park, and the old woman who opened the gates, courtesying to the ground as the carriage rolled through, met his eyes, and told him that he must reserve that matter for after-thought.